A Map of the Soul
by Harold Saxon
Summary: After parting with the 10th Doctor, the recently regenerated Master is hell-bent on taking his revenge on Rassilon. Will the Doctor and Donna be able to prevent the Master from full-filling a deadly prophesy? "Warning": Benedict Cumberbatch Master with some Sherlock mannerism. COMPLETED
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:**_

_"A Map of the Soul" belongs to a series called: "A Timelord and his madman", from which the first installment was posted in January 2010, directly after the final episode of the 10th Doctor. It is a sort of alternative season 5, in which the 10th Doctor has fortunately survived the events of "The End of time". Wandering alone through space and time in search of the Master (Simm Master), he finally succeeded to save the Master from the Timelock in the first story of the series called "His Silent Mind". Other installments include (In the right order): "Judoon Justice", "A Murderous Feast", "Shattered Worlds", "Before Harry met Lucy", "The Most Happy Bride", and "This Reflection of Me". If you're interested in the rest of the series and don't want to miss out on the Doctor's and the Master's previous adventures, hit the author button and find the links on my author page._

_In the previous story "This Reflection of Me", the Doctor and the Master have been traveling together as equal companions and friends for the last twenty years. They have recently picked up Donna while they are following the trail of the newly resurrected Rassilon, who has merged his essence with the Tudor queen Anne Boleyn and is using her as a corporal vessel to sustain his existence. The Doctor and his companions end up on Saltsea, a planet where the dominant race of people are once created by the Timelords to guard a terrible secret that lies hidden in the heart of an ancient tomb. We learn that d____uring the great Timewar, the Master, resurrected as the Nightmare Child, was sent out by the desperate Timelord council to defeat the guardians of the tomb and to collect the hidden powers that lay dormant there. After finding out that the treasure he was looking for was actually the essence of Omega, one of the Timelord's founding fathers, the Master quickly decided to claim the prize for himself. His greed and arrogance ultimately led him to his demise, for Omega's lifeforce was too powerful to be contained within the Master's mortal body. In the end, the Master was forced to regenerate and to sacrifice his own Tardis to save his life. His mission a failure and marked by the Timelords as a traitor, the Nightmare Child disappeared from the pages of history._

_Now many years later, the Master, who has lost the haunting sound of the drums inside his head, but is becoming increasingly unstable due to the burden of his reawakened conscience, tries once again to gain access to the tomb. The torture he has once suffered by Rassilon's hand has inadvertently made him immortal, so he could now absorb Omega's essence and turn himself into an invincible force to fight Rassilon. However, the transformation was violently interrupted, and the Master died, only to regenerate into one of his previous incarnations, the Nightmare Child (Cumberbatch Master)._

_Before the Doctor or Donna could lay eyes on his new regeneration, the Master escaped in his rediscovered Tardis. Hellbent on revenge, he set out to find Rassilon. _

_This story begins with a flashback to a scene from "Before Harry met Lucy". The Doctor encounters River Song who reveals to him the Ood's ominous prophesy of the future, warning him about the imminent resurrection of Rassilon…and the rise of the Nightmare Child._

**A Map of the Soul**

**Chapter 1**

**Previously: **

_Christmas 2004_

The light of the stars started to fade and dawn was soon to arrive. The Doctor and River Song ventured through the woodlands. As they made their way between barren trunks and prickly undergrowth, they were greeted by the frail birdsongs of the very first morning birds.

"Listen. Beautiful, isn't it?" River whispered. "It's like the ancient forests of Indra." She glanced back at him, hopeful to see a sign of recognition on his face. But this was a much younger Doctor, one who had not known her long enough to remember the good times they will have on the little dwarf planet.

"What did the Ood elders exactly tell you?" The Doctor asked. He had been so caught up in his own troubled thoughts that he had not even heard River's remarks.

"Not much." River replied, trying to hide her disappointment from him. "You know how they are. Oh come sit with the elders of the Ood. Come share the dreaming. When it comes to the interpretation, they could explain very little to me."

"Well, they've always been a race of very few words." The Doctor answered, remembering his own last dream session quite vividly. "What did they show you? Can you recall any of it?"

"It was all a bit hazy. " River shut her eyes for a moment, trying to dig deep inside her memories. "I saw the symbol of three, marked as a merging between the Greek letters alpha and omega in a triangular shape. It has started to show up everywhere. Not only here on earth in the 21st century, but also in space and time, throughout the entire history of the human race. It hasn't been there before."

"That's exactly the same symbol that we've seen on the Infinity." The Doctor muttered. The Infinity Corporation, does it have anything to do with that?"

"All I saw was a spaceship, apparently abandoned except for one little girl. A human child."

"That's Rachel." The Doctor told her. His hearts sank when he realized that the prophecy of the Ood elders had already begun to take shape in their own time stream. "What else, tell me what else did you see?"

"A woman, red hair, feisty attitude, a bit too noisy for my taste. She is going to get married, and on her wedding day, she's wearing a pearl earring. Only, it's not really a pearl. It's something else."

"Red hair, loud mouth, Donna! I could be Donna! But…why? Why Donna?" The Doctor muttered to himself. He racked his brains but he couldn't figure it out right away. "Alright." He encouraged her, while storing the information up for later. "Go on, tell me more!"

"A young man, a scientist perhaps. Certainly a bit creepy looking, with a sickly pale complexion as if he hardly ever sees daylight. I saw him sitting behind a microscope, conducting some kind of experiment. Outside the lab, there is a marble slate mounted on the walls commemorating the founder. He's working in the Rachel Boekbinder's Institute for neurological science." She paused for a heartbeat to let the information sink in. "The elders told me that these three people were somehow connected, they said they were like the fine threads in a web, feeding the black spider in the middle. They are the key to the events that will follow."

"Tell me more." He said, with growing anxiety.

"The Restoration of the four. The drums shall rise again. I saw another woman, chestnut hair, piercing green cat-eyes. A proud and noble queen, she once stood on a scaffold, facing her own execution in front of an angry mob, but she was saved, only to disappear again, the white bride hidden in the dark and lost in time."

She looked at the Doctor, who urged her to continue.

"The elders told me that she will be the spark that lights up this inferno. The Master of old will return, the bloody rise of the nightmare child, bringing with him the drums, the destruction of all of creation, and ultimately…your demise." She paused, and studied his face. "That last woman. Do you know her?"

"No. Not yet." The Doctor replied worriedly.

"And the others?"

"Some. Well, actually, most of them. Oh this horrible! I was there all the time, right by his side. I didn't think it could do any harm to let him tweak the time-stream a little. Well that's what you get if you pretend to be lord victorious, just for a second. You destroy the bloody universe!" He stopped rambling and gazed back at her in shock when the horrible realization hit him. "I've done this. All that the Oods have shown you, I'm to blame."

"It's not your fault."

"I've let him save Rachel. I've allowed this to happen. I should have stopped him."

"You can still prevent it. If you would just let me –"

"No! I know what you are going to say, but no! Let me help him. Let me do this my own way." He picked up pace, eager to find Lucy and the Master.

"Doctor, wait!" River yelled as she watched him ran out into the fields. In the dim morning light, she could see two figures approaching. The Doctor turned to her before they were in hearing distance.

"Not a word about this to Master. Do you understand?" He told her urgently.

"But –"

"Promise me."

River sighed. She had a very bad feeling about this, but she knew the Doctor. There was no way to change his mind. At least…not yet.

"All right." She grudgingly agreed. "I won't tell him."

**1.**

She would never forget the day her parents died.

It was a perfect summer day, hot but with a cool salty breeze from the nearby sea. Cathy was 8, her little sister Anne only 6. They were on holiday in France in Normandy and were driving through the countryside to get to the little seaside cottage that his father had rented for the summer. The two girls were sitting in the backseat of their family car, a tiny white Fiat with round windows that reminded Cathy of some sort of metal igloo on wheels. The windows were rolled down, and the exciting scents of a young summer swept inside the cabin as they drove over a narrow single lane road through the farmland.

"How are you holding on back there little Cate?" Her dad checked on her through the rear-view mirror. "You're not too bored?"

Cathy shook her head. Her two pigtails swept from side to side, and she lifted her bunny doll up for her father to see. "Not at all! Casper here has invented a great game for us to play."

"Really? That clever bunny! What are the rules?"

"Well, Casper is going to pick out something that he sees from outside the window, and we have to guess what it is. He will give clues, like tell us what color it is or what it is made of."

"Sounds like a real fun game. I bet you're very good at it."

"I am better at it than Anne, but that's not so strange. She's younger than me." Cathy answered wisely. She looked to her side at her sister who was very busy trying to fit the head of her favourite toy animals in her mouth.

"Cathy darling." Her mother spoke to her over her shoulder. "Do you want us to join in to make it a little more interesting for you?"

"Oh honey, just let her be." Her father muttered, suppressing a sigh. "Why are you always so concerned when she plays with Anne? It's completely innocent. It's just her age."

"I just don't want her to get into trouble. That's all." She snapped. It was hot in the car and she was not in the mood for any long arguments. "Cathy, do you want mummy to sit in the back with you to keep you company?"

"No." Cathy was a little bit confused why her mother wanted to keep an eye on her while she obviously has been such a good girl. "We're fine, aren't we Anne?"

Anne didn't say much and chewed on the plastic pony that Cathy had given her to play with. She kicked her little feet up in the air and accidentally hit the back of her mother's seat.

"Cathy." Her mother told her sternly. "Will you stop doing that? It's very annoying."

"I didn't do that. It was Anne. I guess she is bored." Cathy replied innocently.

"You know very well that Anne cannot do this." Her mother sounded aggravated, and Cathy, fearing that she was getting into trouble again because of her younger sister, turned to Anne.

"Stop it. I said stop it!" She pushed her younger sibling's legs down, only to get one of her red shoes in her chest.

"Cathy I am warning you!"

"But it's her fault! It's Anne, she just doesn't listen."

Her mother gave her father a long, tired look. "Innocent you said? I think it has been going on long enough. She's not three anymore."

"Don't do this honey. Not on our holiday." Cathy's father warned.

Her mother shut her eyes, breathed in deeply, and counted back from 5 till another jolt shook her chair. "Stop it Cathy! Stop it I said!" She shouted.

"But it wasn't me! It was Anne! Why am I always getting blamed for things that I didn't do." Cathy complained, sobbing now, and getting frustrated with the unfairness of it all. "Look at what you've done, mummy is getting very angry with us." She told her troublesome little sister.

"That's it, Cathy what in God's name are you doing back there –" Her mother finally took the effort to turn around to talk to her when she suddenly froze. Her eyes widened in astonishment, her mouth dropped open. Words came tumbling out, but Cathy would never hear her finish the sentence, for at that exact same moment, a grain lorry came thundering around the corner of a dirt road. It had remained hidden from her father's view by the surrounding walls of grain and appeared so sudden that he had no time to hit the brakes. The tiny car smashed head-on into the monstrous vehicle. Cathy screamed when the hood of the car disappeared underneath the lorry. The front window exploded into the cabin in a cloud of shards. Metal was crushed against metal. Her father was instantly killed. Her mother sliced her head open on the warped frame of the front window and bled to death in the following minutes that it would take for the ambulance to get to the crash site, and little Cathy herself, who always refused to wear seatbelts even if her parents begged her, was catapulted right out of her seat. She flew through the air, weightless for a short moment, until gravity reclaimed her, and like a fragile little bird made out of glass, she was shattered by the impact with the unforgiving ground.

**2.**

Cathy fought her way back into consciousness, gasping for breath as the last traces of her nightmare slowly dissolved into reality. She woke up in her bedroom, her legs and torso entangled in sweat-soaked linen, blinking her eyes into a narrow strip of daylight that shone through a gap between the drawn curtains. There came a brief knocking on her door before Grace poked her head around the corner.

"Are you all right?" She asked hesitantly.

Cathy rubbed her hand over her face. "I-I am fine." She answered, but her voice was shaking.

"Are you sure? You were screaming like the flat was on fire."

"I am all right." A pause. "Just another one of those awful nightmares."

"At six thirty in the morning?" Grace whistled. "Must be new record." She gave her a smile that was full of sympathy. "Do you want me to fetch you a glass of water?"

"No. I am really okay." Cathy rolled out of bed and examined her battered alarm clock that had once again proven itself to be completely worthless. "Six thirty. Shit! I was supposed to get up much earlier!" She picked up her clothes from the floor before making a mad dash for the bathroom. Grace watched her go with an amused look on her face. "Do you want me to make you breakfast Cate?" She shouted at her over the sound of a running shower.

"Yes please!" Came the reply. "Two lumps of sugar, no milk!

After a short shower, Cathy reappeared in the tiny kitchen that was at the back of the apartment. She was fully dressed for the day, but her hair was still dripping wet. It left damp patches all over her shirt. Grace was sitting at the table, munching on a piece of marmalade toast. She pushed a steaming mug of coffee in her direction. "Here you go, one stomach churner straight up, bon appetite."

"Thanks." Cathy just had her laptop plugged in when she realized that she had lost something. As she searched frantically through the mount of mail and advertisement leaflets spread out over the kitchen table, Grace just sighed and held out a data stick in the shape of a plastic cow to her. "Looking for this?"

"Thank God!" Cathy said with great relief. "I thought I had to remake the whole bloody presentation again!"

"Seriously Cate, what are you going to do without me?"

"Oh I don't know." Cathy quickly plugged the data stick into her computer. "Probably die and get eaten by one of misses Lauren's cats." She realized with a sense of mild panic that she was only half-joking about this, and gazed worriedly at the stacks of carton boxes in the hallway with all of Grace's stuff neatly packed inside. Today was moving day for her flatmate.

"When are they coming?"

"Around 1, 1:30. Something like that. Anyway, it's not much." Grace shrugged, sipping from her tea. "You know I don't have any large furniture. We could have probably moved everything ourselves if wasn't that John doesn't want to get his hands dirty and get stains over the seat covers of his precious new car."

"God I am really going to miss you." Cathy complained, meaning every word of it. "The flat is going to feel so empty."

"Don't be silly. You'll be getting someone new moving in soon enough." Grace laughed. "Misses Lauren will take care of that."

"I know, but I don't want anyone else. I want you. I know you. You're nice. Who knows what I will be getting now. He could be a complete slob, or worse, a coke sniffing serial killer, who drinks blood and likes to play the drums at 4 in the morning."

"So you're looking out for a bloke then." Grace grinned at her joke. "You're fed up with living with other hens."

"It's not exactly for me to say what I am going to get. Besides, it's Rotterdam. I don't expect any normal people to show up."

Cathy gulped down a mouthful of very bitter tasting coffee. She really must try to do something about this caffeine addiction of hers. This stuff makes her stomach turn into a solid brick.

"You know what you should do? You should find yourself a boyfriend, like me. Preferably a rich one, with a gorgeous apartment in the city and a great view over the river." Grace said with a dreamy look on her face. "John has a few workmates from the office who are not too bad to look at. You should meet up with them. See how they are like."

"Yeah, well not interested." Cathy murmured. "I don't want one of my friends to arrange a pity date for me. I have not sunken so low, not yet."

"Oh come on Cate. You're a lovely girl. You should go out more. All you do is work work work! Your job is paying you horribly, why don't you cut yourself some slack and spend a bit more time on getting your life back on track instead of locking yourself up in the lab all day?"

"Research does not pay out in coin, but rewards us with knowledge." Cathy replied wisely, although she had questioned the validity of this wisdom more than ever so often, especially at the end of every month, when her bank-account seemed to irrevocable sink into deep red numbers. At the end of the day, however noble the profession, a girl needs to pay her rent.

From the corner of her eyes, she caught the time on the Hello kitty clock, and almost choked on her coffee.

"Shit shit shit…I am late!" She poured the rest of it down her throat and yanked the data stick out of the laptop.

"Why is this so important? You have a lab meeting every Friday." Grace commented, watching her wrestle into her coat.

"This one is special! If I can't do this right I am in such big trouble. I just can't be late! Not today." She rushed out into the hallway and snatched her bag from the hook. "Call me later, yeah?" She said apoplectically before she rushed out, only to reappear seconds later to run right back into the kitchen again.

"Keys." Cathy and Grace muttered simultaneously, as Grace held them out for her to take.

"God I am so going to miss you!" Cathy muttered gratefully, and planted a kiss on her friend's cheek before she turned on her heels and rushed out.

"That girl is going to forget where she has put her head someday." Grace said to herself as she listened how the front door of their apartment slammed shut.

**3.**

"Where are we going?" Donna asked as she watched the Doctor steer the Tardis down the timevortex. The control room was unusually dark, and lacked the cheerful atmosphere that she remembered from before. Even the Tardis core seemed tired, its up and down motion joyless, emitting a light that was not much more than a pale green glow. She did not doubt that this was a grim reflection of the Doctor's own state of mind.

"The Tardis found something." The Doctor didn't lift his eyes from the keyboard as he spoke to her. His mood had not much improved since they've lost the Master. "A relatively small disturbance in the timeline. It's not easy to pick up. Not nowadays anyway. There are hundreds of disturbances everywhere at anytime." He added with heavy hearts, realizing that Rassilon's influence was growing stronger. "But this is the one that we need to follow." He said, nodding to himself for reassurance. "This is the one that will lead us to him."

"Him…?" Donna dared to ask. If only he would finally start to share his grief with her, she thought. Open up a little. It didn't need to be much.

The Doctor looked up from his computer screen and just stared at her. Even after all this time, he couldn't make himself let his name pass his lips. For now, all he could share with her was a burdened silence.

They landed on a large green lawn in the middle of what appeared to be a city park. The Doctor was the first to get out of the Tardis, followed by Donna, who stepped out, eyes blinking into the sun. She was surprised by the familiarity and peacefulness of the surroundings, so much had she grown accustomed to the alien landscape of Saltsea.

"Alright." She said, glancing around and trying to sound optimistic. "There are cars and skyscrapers, people walking their dogs, and airplanes in the sky. I take it we're back then?" She concluded, not without a deep sense of relief.

"Almost." Muttered the Doctor. "The year is 2020. We're in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in a not too distant future." He stuck his hands in the pockets of his trousers and made his way across the park towards a 25 storey high public building at the very edge of the green scenery.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Donna asked, coming after the Doctor.

"A scientist. Someone who's working on neuroregeneration. A bit creepy looking apparently. I don't know his name, and only have this faint description of how he looks like, but he should be here. At least that is what the Tardis thinks after it has extracted the clues supplied by the white point star."

As they approached the entrance of the building complex, he pointed out a large blue banner that hung nearby. The Erasmus University is welcoming students for the new summer lectures of 2020. Donna read.

"So the Tardis thinks we can find your creepy scientist in here?"

The Doctor nodded again and brought out his psychic paper, just in case. "A scientist in an university. That makes sense. Back to school it is." He added, forcing a smile that seemed more desperate than cheerful to Donna. She rather he didn't pretend. It was more than clear to her that without the Master, the Doctor was slowly falling apart.

It turned out that it wasn't that difficult to get in. For a start, they didn't even need to show their IDs. There were simply too many people around for the security guards to care. The central hall was packed with students, freshmen who came in early, standing in line to get their study books on a discount. There were also busloads of international students from Eastern Europe and Asia who were here to attend the summer courses. They spend a great deal of time in the hall, looking very lost. Donna found the whole experience actually quite pleasant. After all the death, blood and madness of Saltsea, she was so glad to be part of something normal. At least there was nothing scary about a whole bunch of bright-eyed young people who were enthusiastic about their studies.

"This looks promising." The Doctor pointed out a message board that was set up next of the entrance to the lecture halls.

"Regenerative medicine. The future is now." He read out loud. Donna saw him scowl when he picked up the logo of the company that had sponsored the event. It was the Greek letter alpha merged with omega in a triangle, the unmistakable symbol of the Infinity Corp, the 21st century equivalent of the brotherhood of the Watcher who were so keen on resurrecting their lord and master Rassilon back in 18th century France.

"He's here. " The Doctor whispered. "We're getting closer."

Joining in with the flow of students, they entered a large lecture room that was built like a theatre or a music hall, and picked out seats in one of the upper rows.

"I don't get this." Donna told the Doctor. "What would Rassilon wanne do with 21st century Earth science? To you guys this stuff must be like child's play, right?"

"Don't be so condescending about your own race. Human science may not be so backward as you think. Well at least the field of medicine isn't. Right now it's actually decades more advanced that it should have been."

"What are you talking about? How is that even possible?"

"Long story." The Doctor muttered, glancing over his shoulder and studying the other attendees carefully. He seemed distracted and evasive on the subject. "Something to do with a little girl. It happened a while ago." A lump caught in his throat. He just couldn't tell her. The recollection of Rachel Boekbinder was too much connected with the Master.

"Did something bad happen to her?" Donna asked, not aware that she was opening up an old emotional scar.

The Doctor shook his head. "No. Not bad. Something wonderful that should not have happened."

Obviously, the Doctor's answer was more puzzling than it was revealing. Donna wanted to ask more, but refrained from doing so when she saw the rueful look on his face. It wasn't her fault. She didn't know that it was because of the Master that Rachel Boekbinder had survived the horrors of the holocaust. The little girl should have died in the second world war, but the Master saved her by telling her to convince her family to flee to England. At first the Doctor had naively believed that this act of kindness had little consequence in the great schemes of things, but as events unfold it had become more and more clear to him that he had been horribly wrong. It was Rachel's prolonged existence that had enabled her to make her great contributions to medical science. Using her extraordinary mind she had propelled the field forward, accelerating the knowledge and driving technology to a point when almost everything was possible. The cruel reality was that Rassilon had tricked the Master in taking part in the design of his resurrection, and he, the Doctor, had allowed it to happen. He will never be able to forgive himself for that.

"Finally, something that is possibly interesting is happening!" Donna whispered a tad too loud, fed up with the waiting. The Doctor snapped out of his train of thoughts and paid attention to the lecturestage below. The lights dimmed, and the audience stopped talking as the first speaker appeared. A spectacled man in his late fifties with thinning grey hair, he looked like a pompous professor of some sort. His welcome speech was long and very-very boring, making it almost impossible for Donna not to get bored again. Soon she was distracted and was glancing around in the audience, taking in the faces of the other attendees half hidden in the dark. She had been watching the Doctor closely. Even back in the central hall, she noticed that he was constantly looking around, and searching. Although he had never really told her, she knew that the Master was still alive. Hell bent as the Master was on revenge, she was pretty sure that he would be following the same tracks in order to find Rassilon, which meant that the Master could be here, right now, sitting in the dark with them.

_He might even have regenerated. _She thought. _That's why the Doctor is_ _studying every face that the sees around here. _She remembered how captain Jack had once explained to her that a regeneration for a Timelord was like dying and being reborn into a different person. Everything was changed, the face, the hair, the voice, even the personality. _If that was true, how were they supposed to recognize him_? He could be anyone. He could be one of the speakers who were up next or one of those students sitting right behind her.

_The Doctor will know. _She reassured herself. _I may not be able to pick him out of the crowd, but the Doctor can. He can sense him. _She had seen him track down the Master at Saltsea when the two men were miles apart. She was convinced that the Doctor would recognize the Master straight away…if only he was really here.

**4.**

Cathy was making her way through the central hall to the elevators, passing by security and zigzagging through the chaotic flow of students.

"Come on, com on." She muttered impatiently as she kept punching in the up button, waiting for an elevator to come down. It was useless of course. The medical faculty of the Erasmus university had all of its research facilities of all of the 15 departments stacked on top of each other in one single narrow high-rise, while lecture halls were spread out in two wings on the third level. Of the six elevators that were available for the scientific staff, two were out of order for as long as she could remember, and the other four were running on their last legs. She was 15 minutes late already when she caught a lift. When she finally reached her floor she didn't even bother going to her office but rushed straight into the conference room instead.

"I am so sorry, I am really really sorry!" She apologized as she shrugged off her coat. "It was the subway. I was stuck for half an hour, technical issue with the switchgears..." She stopped rambling and sat herself down quickly when she noticed the look her supervisor was giving her.

"Right." Professor Duinkerk spoke. "Now that doctor Summerfield is so good to make time in her busy schedule to join us, let us continue with the discussion." He nodded to her colleague, a tall young man in a T-shirt and baggy trousers who was standing in front of the presentation board with his hands in his pockets.

"Robert, please continue."

Cathy stuck up her hand.

"Yes doctor Summerfield Duinkerk sighed, not exactly thrilled with the interference.

"I am sorry, but are we still keeping the order of presentations according to the schedule? Because if we do, I was supposed to give mine around now?"

"You were not here in time." Duinkerk told her. "We've changed the schedule, and you're now last. If we have enough time left that is."

"But –"

"Robert, could you continue?"

Cathy gave up and sank back in her chair. _He has to give me another chance. _She thought, trying to calm her panicking self. If Duinkerk wanted to decide whether he should sack her or not, at least he would have to make this decision based on a thorough evaluation of her work, right?_ Even if the old goat really has it in for me he still has to play it fair._

But when she finally did get her chance to present her data, it was right at the end of the meeting and she was only allowed half of the time of her peers. Since it was getting close to lunchtime, most of the audience had lost interest, and kept checking their watches and yawning extensively. She tried her best to keep at least the professor interested, but even he made no efforts to keep up the pretence of paying attention, and was busy with answering emails on his Iphone.

"That would be quite enough. Thank you Cathy." Duinkerk said without diverting his attention from the tiny screen on his mobile. He had not even seen her last slides.

"But I am not finished. I still need to do the summary and the conclusion."

"Yes well, we can probably live without that." Duinkerk said, getting up and signaling to the rest that the meeting was officially over. "Thank you everyone, wonderful work, except perhaps for doctor Summerfield." He added quite deliberately, and finally looked her in the eyes. "I need to speak to you."

"Yes." She felt the air being pushed out of her lungs as she crossed the room to get to Duinkerk.

"Not now, I've got more important things to do. Come around my office after 6." He said before turning his back on her and leaving.

"That was God-awful Cate." Robert came over to her with his laptop tucked under his arm. They worked in the same lab and shared an office together. Rob was a good bloke, not like the others who, sensing the tension between her and the professor, didn't like to socialize with her too much.

"You really know how to get under old cheap goat's skin every single time, don't you?" He teased her.

"Oh he absolutely hates me." Cathy sighed. "I might as well start clearing my desk and forget about this. No way he's going to let me stay now."

"Maybe you should change your research subject a little. Make him more interested in what you do. Why don't you think up something that's more his cup of tea just for a side-project, like research on spinecord regeneration after injury or something?"

Cathy gave him an irritated look. "What?"

"Why not?" He shrugged. "You know how to do it. It would be practically the same experiments for you."

"You mean I ought to research something that will attract sponsors and earn him more money?"

"Yes. Now be reasonable here, cash is what makes the world go round. Even in the world of science. You can't do research without it Cate."

"I am not going to add a new subject to my research. I have not enough time as it is. Besides, you know my project is worthwhile. I believe it's worthwhile. I just wish I could make him see it the same way as I do."

"Well, maybe you should take him to see your sister."

Hurt and anger appeared on her face, and she turned away from him.

"Cate? Wait!" Realizing he had gone too far, Rob came running after her. "I was just trying to cheer you up."

"Well you failed miserably. That was not even remotely funny." But she slowed down to hear him speak.

"I am sorry okay? Really."

"All right then, apology accepted." A pause as she thought of something. "But you have to buy me lunch."

"You're broke again?" Rob guessed.

"Yessss." Cathy replied, slightly embarrassed.

"No problemo." Rob replied with a broad smile. "If that will make you happy, I'll gladly pay your chicken curry wrap for you. Now let's head downstairs before they run out."

**5.**

"The next speaker is something of a legend, a young genius, who has single handedly put this university on the global map. A man whose work is internationally renounced to be at the very frontier of what is capable in regenerative medicine, and who has been awarded many times for his contribution on stem cell research. The youngest professor of our faculty, a most remarkable young man, please put your hands together to welcome our esteemed colleague and my protégée, professor Felix Grant."

An excited applause came from the audience that had been so far been slowly nodding off to the string of tedious lectures. Donna woke up and sat straight up in her seat to watch a thin geeky looking man climb up on the stage.

"Felix Grant. I read about him. The Tardis showed me some of his news articles." The Doctor mumbled.

"Sounds like he's Jesus in here." Donna whispered back.

"To these people in the audience, he might well be." He replied, keeping his eyes fixed on the young scientist.

"What?" Donna scoffed. "Did he cure the blind or something? Heal the cripple and walk on water?"

"Just watch and listen. Although I must admit, getting two out of three right is not bad."

"Thank you so much for this warm welcome." Felix spoke to his admiring audience, standing tall, proud and vain. His voice had a strange calming quality to it, like the soft murmurs of a snake. "You are more than generous." He raised his hands to hush down the excited crowd. "Although as a scientist, I do believe in the power of numbers, my teacher and dear friend professor van der Kamp -" He pointed out the spectacled elder gentleman who had introduced him, and the audience applauded as he took a bow. "- he has once taught me that one well chosen picture can say more than a thousand words. He also taught me that a good scientist should be able to explain his work to anyone in no more than 1 sentence, no matter how complex the subject, or how ignorant the audience." He chuckled at his own joke, and amazingly the audience laughed with him. "Well, I am not only a remarkable scientist, but also a most excellent student."

"God he's really full of himself, isn't he?" Donna muttered.

"That's why I'll be following the professor's advice. I will only show you one thing today, and that one thing, will blow your mind." He paused, prolonging the suspense. "Let us behold, the future of regenerative medicine."

A presentation slide was projected on the massive screen behind him. It showed a photo of a normal white laboratory mouse. It was balancing on its hindlegs on Felix's hand.

Murmurs and whispers started to come from the audience. A girl with glasses and pigtails who sat in the front row raised her hand.

"Is this a joke or something?" She asked. "That's just a ordinary mouse."

"What are you, a fresher?" Felix regarded her with contempt. "I hope you don't aspire to become a molecular scientist. You wouldn't be considered commendable for the job. For your carrier I would recommend something more simple, a surgeon perhaps."

The audience laughed and the girl sank back in her chair, trying to become invisible.

"An ordinary appearance does not guarantee an ordinary organism. Genetic modifications can be invisible, working silently in the background with every cell division that occurs within the body. What is remarkable about this little animal is not how it looks like. It's what it potentially can do. Ladies and gentlemen, this specimen as lived for more than 11 years now."

A gasp came from the audience and people started to whisper loudly. "Absolutely astonishing." Muttered someone behind Donna.

"Why is this such a big deal?" Donna asked the Doctor. "My granddad's dog lived till he was 12. My great aunt May's cat even made it to 11 and would probably have outlived her if it hadn't been run over by her neighbor."

"That's not the same thing." The Doctor explained to her, shaking his head. He too seemed stunned. "Dogs and cats are expected to live for at least a decade, but not rodents, not mice. If a mouse is 2 years old than that will be the equivalent of a human being living up to 100 years. 11 years is at least 5 times longer than the maximum live span of these animals. Methuselah mice, trice over, that's what Grant has made."

"So how is this miracle achieved?" Felix continued. "Two words. Continuous regeneration. A capacity to heal and restore damaged organs that has been lost to us mammals, but has been retained to some degree in lower lifeforms such as reptilians and amphibians. But no longer." He stressed with a finger pointing up in the air. "With genetic manipulation, we have generated the ultimate stem cell, capable to replace any type of damaged tissue. After treatment, this mouse has not become only ageless, but has also become virtually indestructible."

The slides started to alternate, showing the results of a series of animal experiments in which the mice were subjected to all kinds of man-made injuries, from wounds cut in out in their skin to the severing of the spinal cord.

"Oh this is too horrible to watch." Donna muttered, feeling absolutely repulsed, she turned away. She noticed that the Doctor seemed shocked as well, but then quickly realized that the brutality of the methods was not that what most horrified the Doctor. It was the results. Every time the stem cell treated mice were challenged with an injury, the animals fully recovered without so much as leaving a single scar behind. They even managed to re-grow their limbs after Grant had them amputated.

"Doctor…" Donna said, finally noticing a pattern here. "These mice can almost heal as fast as the Master could. Now why does that worry me?"

"Because it's a complete violation against nature." The Doctor ranted condemningly. "Sure, humans will eventually be able to slow down the aging process and use stem cells to replace failing organs, but this technology is millennia before its time. They shouldn't have made this progress so quickly." He paused and swallowed. "This is all Rassilon's doings. He's guiding him, this Richard Grant, forcing him to prepare the world for his return."

_And I in part am responsible for this._ He though as he watched with growing anxiety how the astounded audience gave Grant a standing ovation at the end of his lecture while the screen behind him faded into the ominous trademark of the Infinity Cooperation.

**6.**

Cathy waited till long after 6 when she finally dared to go down to professor Duinkerk's office. She found the door closed and locked from the inside. She wouldn't dare to disturb him so she went back to her desk. Except for Robert and a foreign exchange student who didn't speak a word of English, the lab was now completely deserted.

"God dammit." She heard Robert curse all the way from corridor as he stumped into their office. "Those stupid elevators are bust again. There is only one left that is working. How can they fuck up 5 elevators at the same time?"

"You should have taken the stairs. It was probably quicker." Cathy mumbled, lost in thought and staring at a paper on her screen that she rewriting for the umpteen time.

"You know what? I did! I climbed 20 stairs to get from the 4th floor all the way up here, just to put my samples back in the fridge and to get my coat to go home. How is that for efficiency?!" Rob had to stop talking for a moment to get his breath back. "God I think I am going to have a bloody heart-attack." He complained.

"Uhuh." Cathy muttered, still staring absentmindedly at her word document. "See you tomorrow Rob."

Finally noticing what was going on, Robert sighed and turned her chair around so he could talk to her face to face. "Hello!" He snapped with his fingers. "Contact Cathy, Contact!"

"Sorry." Cathy muttered, blinking with her eyes. "Miles away, wasn't I?"

"Let me guess, you didn't get to speak to old cheap goat yet?"

"No…the professor is probably still in a meeting or something. You know how busy he is."

"Did you knock on his door to let him know that you are still waiting?"

"Wouldn't want to disturb him…his door was locked." Cathy admitted almost shamefully.

"How long are you going to sit here?" Robert sighed again. "You are a nervous wreck already. Another hour of this and you turn into a catatonic zombie. Go see him now and get this over with."

"What if I piss him off again? I don't want to get sacked straight away."

"Cathy, listen to me. Be rational about this. He's not going to fire you. Not while you still have that grant money to fund your research. So stop worrying."

"You know what –" She said, thinking this through. "You're right. I still have 2 years left from my Rachel Boekbinder's grant. Technically, I am funding my own salary. What is he going to do, take that away from me and give it to another researcher? Ha!" She rose out of her chair, laughing nervously.

"That would be ridiculous!" Rob added and pushed her out of their office into the direction of Duinkerk's room.

"Absolutely preposterous!" Cathy said, more to convince herself than that she was actually convinced. She shuffled down the hall. "I mean what was I thinking!" She slapped her head and glanced back over her shoulder, only to see that Rob was still behind her, giving her two thumbs up, accompanied with a big fat smile. Feeling mightily stupid, Cathy returned him a somewhat docile grin. She then took in a deep breath to gather her courage and knocked on Duinkerk's door.

"Come in. You're late. I said 6 o' clock." Came Duinkerk's response.

This time the door was unlocked. She went in and found him sitting behind his large mahogany desk, typing away on his computer.

"I am sorry." The apology rolled off her tongue before she even noticed it. She couldn't help herself. It was like a reflex, as soon as she set eyes on the man's sour face she had to simply apologize for existing. "I am so so sorry. I though your door was still closed and you might not want to be disturbed so I decided to wait till you –"

"Sit." Duinkerk ordered without looking away from the screen.

She plopped down the chair as quickly and as obediently as a well-trained poodle.

"So." He finally stopped typing and gazed up at her, which was considering the way he looked at her, not necessarily a good thing.

"So?" She repeated, feeling very small indeed.

"I have discussed your funding with the other staff members."

"Yes."

"We have made a decision whether we should extend your research contract or not."

"Yes."

"And the answer is no."

"No." She mumbled, slowly, like a demented parakeet.

"Yes."

It took a moment, but then the message started to really sink in.

"But –"

"Believe me, it was not an easy decision, but we went through your recent achievements and we had to conclude that they are not up to the high standards that we have set out for this institute. You haven't published one single report last year, but have spent at least 50000 euros on experiments that yielded very dismal results. You have no grant money of your own –"

"Except for the Rachel Boekbinder's grant." She quickly pointed out. "I wrote that grant to fund my research."

"Yes, well. The department has decided that it would perhaps be better to spend it on a different project that has more potential."

"A dif-different project?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. This must be a bloody nightmare.

"Yes. I am afraid that your work is not very much supported by the department. It's too basic. The clinical implications are too unclear."

"Hang on. I am trying to map the biological processes of brain cell interaction. How can this lack support? My research is based on the pioneering work of professor Boekbinder! This is the Rachel Boekbinder institute of neurobiology! It even says so on the marble plaque behind you on the wall. The whole institute is founded on her discoveries!"

"Stop lecturing me on our founder, miss Summerfield." Duinkerk fumed, rising up from his chair and looming over her. "I am very much aware of what kind of institute this is, but however important her work may have been, it's outdated. It doesn't attract sponsors and it is not innovative enough to generate new government funding. Face it, no-one is interest in your work except for you, and in these difficult economical times I have no desire to waste more money on some talentless researcher's private little hobby." He sat down again and straightened his jacket. His pudgy face had gone red, but otherwise he was back to his restrained self.

"So that's it." Cathy muttered, feeling numb and horrible. "I am sacked?"

"That is indeed the right conclusion miss Sumerfield."

Cathy got up from her chair and shuffled to the door. Reaching halfway, she turned around and was about to say something, but gave up when she saw that Duinkerk had returned his attention to the computer screen. According to him, this conversation was simply over.

"Miss Sumerfield."

A smitten of hope lit up, and she turned around.

"I shall sign the papers on Monday. If you will be so good to clear your desk and lab space before the afternoon? I've got another foreign exchange student coming. We're desperately in need of space. Oh and close the door on your way out. There is an awful draft."

**7.**

"I can't believe this." Cathy complained to Rob as she sipped down her third rum and coke through a straw. "Why is this happening to me? Why?"

They were sitting in their favorite bar on the university campus. It was Friday night and the place was packed with students and young academics. They came down here often to bitch about Duinkerk, but tonight, Cathy mainly needed Rob for a good cry on the shoulder.

"I am a nice person. I don't deserve this. Why does this sort of thing never happen to someone with a shitty character?" She moaned while leaning heavily with her elbow on the table as she swayed her drink around dangerously. "Is it because I am not clever enough?" She opted, as doubts sneaked in with the alcohol stupor. "Oh God, Maybe he's right. I am too dumb for science."

Oh don't go listening him." Rob said. "Cate, you're clever. You're the brightest girl I know."

"He called me a talentless researcher mucking about with her hobbies."

"Your work was fine. It's still fine. You should take the data and go somewhere else where they appreciate what you do and just continue."

"Oh don't be ridiculous!" She lamented. "I have no chance. Nobody would want to hire me now. Not with the economy turning out so bad and me without proper references. Besides I am 31. I am too old be picked out for a beginning postdoc job. I should have been an associate professor by now, just like you, but I got nothing. I am a bloody failure." She looked sadly into her glass that was empty except for the melting ice cubes. "Another rum and coke please." She ordered.

Rob shook his head at the barman. "You can have a coke." He told Cathy. "But definitely no more rum for you."

"It wasn't so bad if he didn't say that my research wasn't worth anything. How can that be true if it can help Anne? I only went to study biology because of her."

Her pride dented and her sense of purpose lost, she stared into distance, completely miserable. "After the doctors finally found out what was wrong with her, and told me why she can't wake up. I thought, maybe I can think of a way. There is still a chance. Maybe I can…" She shook her head. "Oh who am I kidding?! Who am I to think that I could actually achieve something that matters to anyone?"

"Don't say that! Anne is very lucky to have you. But you got to be sensible Cate. I know what you're trying to do here, but even if you continue to work on Dr. Boekbinder's theory for another 40-50 years you will only be halfway in bringing your little sis back."

'And what do you suggest, that I follow my aunt Bernie's advice and pull the plug on her?"

"No, no of course not. I was just saying, you got to start doing things for yourself. Stop neglecting your own life trying to save hers."

"I have no life. My work is my life. I've no money, no family, well at least no one awake, and no friends."

"You've got friends Cate…You've got friends who care very-very much for you."

Cathy just stared back at him. "Right." She muttered, not getting the hint at all.

"I want another rum and coke." She slurred, feeling increasingly very sorry for herself.

Rob just sighed. It was no use talking to her now. "Let me bring you home. You had quite enough."

It wasn't after he had dragged a very uncooperative Cathy half-way through the city and arrived at the doorstep of her apartment that he realized that she didn't have her keys with her.

"Where the hell did you leave them?" Rob asked as he rummaged through her bag.

"They're in there. Somewhere." Cathy slurred, feeling sick. "Or…Come to think of it…I might have left them in our office. On my desk."

"Oh are you kidding me?" Rob replied, irritated as hell.

"Just remind me…I need to clear out my desk on Monday…That old cheapgoat Duinkerk told me so. You know I never even dared to call him cheapgoat before, not outloud, but now it doesn't matter anymore. I can call him anything I like. Dungkerk, Dungface. Old cheapgoat dungface…that's what I should have called him, right in his face! You know that the PhD students used to say that he was so bloody cheap that he replaced the copperwires in the lightbulbs by pulling out a coin?"

"Yeah I know that story. Look I've tried the doorbell but nobody is answering. Where's your flatmate? What's her name…Grace. Is she not in?"

"I hate him." As if on cue, she gagged and a sour taste filled her mouth that made her feel even sicker. "God I hate him. That stupid, vain little turd of a man. I bloody HATE him!"

"Yes Cate, I know, but I need to get you inside. You need to lie down. Can I call someone? Do you have Grace's number on your cell phone?" He looked for it but couldn't find it. He really didn't understand why women were putting so much useless stuff in their bags. He even found a freaky plastic cat that started to cry like it's being skinned alive when you squeezed its head. "Your landlady is not answering either. It's like everyone went out to boogey tonight, just to piss me off."

"God that stupid bastard." Cathy carried on with her tirade, completely oblivious to Rob's problems. "That, stupid, sour little man. You know what? I wish he was dead! That's right, dead! You heard me cheapgoat Dungface! Deader than a dodo, that's what you should be. Good bloody riddance!"

"Aha." Robert muttered, noticing the weird looks that they got from the people who passed by in the street. "Don't mind her. She's drunk!" He told them. "She doesn't mean any of that!"

"I mean every word I said, that man should be hung up by his balls and get beaten up like a fucking pinata!" She lurched forward and vomited in the gutter, scaring an elderly lady who was walking her dog into turning straight around and walking away from them quickly.

"Oh-kay now." Robert suddenly realized that it was perhaps a better idea to stop trying to get into her apartment, and haul her drunken ass off the streets. Luckily, his flat was only a short ride away on tram 9. He knew that there must be a stop somewhere just around the corner.

"Let's get out of here before the police comes to get us, shall we?" He mumbled, and dragged her away.

**8.**

Duinkerk shut down his computer after he had finished his last email of the day. He turned off the light in his office and took his coat from the hook. The large window near his desk lit up with the many lights of the city's skyline, with the blue cable bridge that spanned over the Maas river glowing like a heavenly harp. There was no doubt that the view from the 23rd floor was truly spectacular, but professor Duinkerk didn't notice it. In fact he rarely looked out of his window anymore. To him, the panorama outside was just like moving wallpaper. His head was too filled with numbers to be distracted by the stunning view.

He locked his office and stepped down the corridor with his suitcase in his hands, passing by empty offices and laboratories on his way out. _I should do something about these lazy postdocs and students. It's only 7:30 in the evening and the whole floor is already deserted. _When he was working for his phD, he was always in the lab, slaving away till at least 9 every evening. What were these young people thinking nowadays? That science was a cozy desk-job where you could show up from 8 till 5 and discover the next penicillin by accident? For God's sake, where was the ambition? The devotion to work hard and stay long to get things done? _They're all lazy slackers, that's what they are. _Aggravated he pushed in the button to call up one of the elevators.

It took a while before he noticed that four of them had signs taped on the doors to indicate that were out of service. Of the two that were left working, one seemed to be permanently stuck on the 7th floor.

_What is going on with this bloody university? Can't we even afford to keep the elevators running anymore? Why do I even keep paying for services if there aren't any!_ He waited for another 10 minutes or so, then decided that he better used the service elevator instead of waiting here till he died of old age. He made his way to the back of the building, and went behind the storage room where the gas and liquid containers were kept. There he punched in the button and waited.

There were footsteps coming from behind him, echoing down the corridor.

"Who is that?" Professor Duinkerk turned around, spooked by the sound. A man stepped calmly out of the shadows. He was tall and lean, and had an avid look in his sharp blue eyes.

"Are you a repairman?" Duinkerk asked. He didn't look much like one, dressed as he was in a long blue coat and a crisp white shirt. "You're not allowed up here. This is a restricted area that is accessible only for the scientific staff. Can't you read the signs?"

"Of course I can." The young man replied, still perfectly calm, still looking at him, like a snake that was contemplating how best to devour his meal. "I just don't care. I came here to see you, professor Duinkerk."

"How do you know my name?" He noticed that there was something strange going on with the man's hands. He kept closing and opening them rapidly.

Suddenly, they started to emit an eerie red glow. Duinkerk dropped his suitcase and reached for his Iphone, ready to call for help.

"I am afraid that wouldn't help." The stranger told him with a grin. "Think about it. When you call the guards downstairs, they first need to climb up what? 22 stairs? To get all the way up here, that's going to take at least 10 minutes, 7 minutes at a minimum if you're so lucky to not get the fat ones to answer your distress call." He came closer, his hands outstretched and moving over the walls without touching them. As he approached, the pipes in the wall and the metal tubes in the liquid nitrogen cylinders started to rattle violently in their hinges.

"Let me tell you, and I am being fairly generous in my calculations here, you just don't have that much time."

"Who are you?" Duinkerk's heart was drumming inside his chest. He had never felt so afraid before in his whole life. Ancient instincts that had been lulled to sleep by a lifetime of easy living, of microwave meals, remote controls, and central heating, were suddenly reawakened and screamed at him to run for his life. "What do you want from me? Is it money? Do you want my money?" He clumsily took out his wallet and flung it at him. "Take it. Take it all. I don't care. Just don't hurt me! Please."

"It's a bit too late to start being generous now, don't you think?" The grin on the man's pale face was one without compassion. He cocked his head and studied him, no_ scrutinized_ him, like he was some laboratory mouse, soon to be dissected. "I know your kind. You think that you are so clever, don't you?"

He smirked, and the bare pipes that ran over the surface of the wall closest to Duinkerk sprang open and blew an angry hiss of gas into the professor's face. "Just because someone gave you the title professor it doesn't mean that you really deserved it. Your kind are always so full of themselves, vainglorious in the belief of their own high intellect and abilities, while in reality, you are all stuck in meaningless routines, shackled to a fossilized way of thinking." The smirk disappeared. "Admit it Edgar Duinkerk. No innovation will ever come from such small minds, and no greatness shall ever be achieved by petty men like you. Deep in your heart, you know that. That's why the only ambition left to you is to thwart any young talent who dares to grow in the shadow of such poisonous and useless weed. "

A pipe from the cylinder with liquid nitrogen exploded and the professor shrank back in fear, shielding his face from the freezing gas that escaped from the leak. The idea was truly preposterous and defied any scientific logic, but in his mind Duinkerk had no doubt that it was him who was causing all this. This frightening young man with his strange, glowing hands and cold reptilian stare was tearing the whole storage room apart.

"Who are you?" Duinkerk asked, convinced that the man was the devil himself.

"I came in behalf of dr. Summerfield."

"Summerfield?" He was so frightened that he did not immediately associate the name with one of his employees. "Summerfield…Cathy? You came for Cathy?" He ducked when another pipe burst behind him, spraying his back with icecold drainage water. "Who in the devil's name are you?" Duinkerk shouted, getting to the end of his nerves. "Who are you to Cathy? His brother? Her angry boyfriend?! What do you want?"

"Funny you should say that. If you feel you need to know why all this is happening to you, let's just say that I am a great admirer of her work and want to become a patron of her arts. We share a common goal, dr. Summerfield and I." His face turned into something more sinister, a demon that came leaping out of the dark. "And right now, you professor, are standing in my way."

He raised his hand in front of the terrified professor's eyes. Duinkerk felt the hair on his skin rise, as the air around the stranger seemed to warp and fold, and then bulge into a wave that rolled right into the two metal cylinders standing next to him. An explosion followed, and a cloud of freezing gas blasted out of the leak and hit him full in his face. He wanted to scream, but the blast immediately froze him from the neck up, turning him into a human icicle before his lungs had expelled the warmth of his last breath.

The Master observed his creation with a grin and rolled his head over his shoulder to release a most satisfied crack. Then he walked up to the professor and snatched his Iphone to check on the last number that was dialed.

"What do you know, that spineless git did phone for help after all." He made a small circular motion with his hand. A pipe broke off from the wall and came flying into his waiting hand.

"Let's make an end to this before the cavalry arrives." He held the bar like a golfer would hold a club, and with one wide swing, he decapitated Duinkerk. The deep frozen head flew across the corridor till it hit the wall at the other side. It smashed apart like an overripe melon.

_If little Rachel could see now what I have done. If __**he**__ could see what I have done._ But he forced himself to get rid of those thoughts immediately. He didn't want to be reminded of the Doctor. He was different now, a new man, free of the heavy burden of a conscience. There was no need to feel remorse for what he had done. He didn't have any.

He dropped the bar on the floor and stuck his hands inside his pockets. As he strolled away he whistled a cheerful tune to himself. Behind him, the headless body of the professor collapsed on the floor, spilling out a fountain of blood.

_**TBC **_

_**Next chapter will be posted on monday next week. Meanwhile, please review or comment if you have the time. It keeps me motivated. Next chapter will be posted on **_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**1.**

When Donna had adjusted her eyes to the dim lights that came from the flickering torches mounted on the wall, she discovered that she was back inside the tomb beneath Dagonmourn. Shocked by the realization, she swirled around, but there was no sign of the Doctor and the others, and her gaze was only met by the ancient statues, who stared back at her with their empty expressions chiseled in stone. She was completely alone, and at the far end of the chamber, swirling like an evil black eye, was the cursed portal.

"Oh no. I am not going anywhere near that thing again." She said to herself, recalling what had happened last time. She hurried to get away from the distorted eye of harmony as far as possible when she suddenly heard a voice, a young voice, calling out her name.

She shouldn't have looked. No good ever came from looking, she knew that much from cheap horror flicks _and_ from traveling with the Doctor, but she just couldn't help herself. Something about that voice made want to see. So, against her instincts, she slowly turned around, and with her heart hammering inside her chest, she peeked.

A young man was standing behind her. He was standing inside the mirror.

"Who are you?" She whispered, slowly and hesitantly, she leaned closer to take a better look at him.

He was very young, probably still a teenager. He held a blue bike by his side and was beckoning her to come over.

"Donna please." He begged. "You have to help me."

"Help you?" The boy confused her. He was dressed in faded jeans and a green T shirt. With his skinny arms and legs and a head full of bouncy curls he looked like any ordinary teenager, and she was sure they have never met before, but somehow she had a very strong feeling that she knew him. "Why do you need help? Do I know you?"

"Oh come on Red, this no time for jokes!"

"Oy! It's miss for you! Why are you calling me Red? No one calls me that!" She suddenly had a terrible sense of dejavu. She indeed knew him, and she had remembered him before, but then that knowledge had slipped away from her. Regaining that lost piece of information seemed somehow to be very important.

"There is not enough time!" The boy shouted, and looked over his shoulder. He was clearly frightened of something. "They're coming!"

"Who? Who are coming?" She approached him, her own fear was completely forgotten now she noticed how distressed he was. _I really care for this boy._ She thought._ It makes no sense. How can I care this much? I don't even remember his name. What's happening to me?_

"You know who they are. I've told you about them." There was raw fear and desperation in his voice. "Those pale men without faces. The ones that came for me when I was a child. They're back! Donna they're back!"

She slammed her hands on the mirror surface, but the barrier was as solid as a mirror ought to be. "I can't get to you. This is like a brick wall. I can't reach you."

"Donna! Help me please! Please!" The boy begged.

"I can't help you! I am sorry, I want to but I can't!"

Donna's heart stood still when a shadow was cast over the mirror interior. The boy screamed and the air around her suddenly turned ice-cold. She stood helpless and mortified as an invisible monster clawed it's way over the other side of the portal to hunt down its ragged breath that was pushed out of her lungs formed frosty clouds in the air. She sensed a presence, a great evil, cold and menacing, sweeping over her, draining her of her courage. When the oppressive darkness finally passed and the light returned, the boy inside the mirror was gone. Only the blue bicycle was left behind. It lay on one side. The front wheel was still spinning.

Donna trashed awake, drenched in sweat. The name of the boy was caught in her throat like a scream, echoing inside her head till it became as disintegrated as the remnants of the dream itself. Above her, hovering like a friendly moon, was the Doctor's face. It was upside down, and looked at her with one questioning eyebrow raised.

"Donna? All you all right?" He asked not without concern.

Who ever that boy was, however important, the memory of him yet again failed to leave an impression and was soon completely removed from her consciousness, just like the last time.

"Yes. Yes I am fine." She got up and winced when she felt her neck and back crack. Sleeping on the couch of the Tardis library wasn't exactly good for your spine. She took in the black and white office dress that the Doctor was holding out to her.

"Before you going to ask, the answer is no." She replied cheekily. "I don't think it will work on you. How do I say this, you just don't have the right curves for it."

"It's for you." The Doctor gave her a brief smile. It was the first she had seen in weeks.

"What's this for?" She asked, pulling a face.

"We're going to pay a visit to the department where Felix Grant is doing his research. By the way." He added. "I have no doubt what so ever that you will look far lovelier in this than I would. I don't have the right legs for dresses. Although they do know to appreciate the beauty of a pair of hairy legs in Scotland."

The Rachel Boekbinder's research institute for regenerative science was on the 12th floor of the Erasmus university, and this time, the Doctor and Donna didn't get inside that easily. It was Saturday, and in contrast to yesterday, the building was almost deserted, so the guards had more than enough time to bother strangers. They had to identify themselves using the Doctor's psychic paper to get to the elevators and gain access to the research facilities on the higher floors.

"It still amazes me that they keep falling for this." Donna said to the Doctor while were standing in the elevator. "I mean, if you think about it, what is health and safety doing here? Nobody is going to make an appointment on at 8:30 on a Saturday morning."

"Well I don't know, they usually drop by when you least expect it, don't they? Anyway, it doesn't really matter what you tell the guards, as long as they get a good look at the psychic paper and it works like charm."

When they stepped out on the right floor, Donna was surprised to find the whole department bustling with people. The Doctor gave her a cheeky look. "Scientists hey, they never seemed to know when to stop." He wandered down the corridor pass the restricted area sign and right into one of the labs like he owned the place. Donna followed him on his heels. She had kind of imagined that this would be more like an undercover sort of job, and was feeling increasingly awkward as she and the Doctor were gawked at by the staff. "Excuse us. We're from health and safety." She mumbled almost apolitically, as if that would explain everything. Maybe it was time for the Doctor to bring out the physic paper again.

"Excuse me, but can I help you?" A man she recognized to be one of the speakers from yesterday came up to them. He didn't look too pleased.

"Ah. You must be professor van der Kamp." The Doctor grabbed his hands and shook it enthusiastically. "I am dr. John Smith from health and safety, and this is dr. Donna Noble, my colleague. We came here to inspect your lab!"

"What? On a Saturday? In the early morning?" Professor van der Kamp lifted his glasses.

"Yeah." Donna said, secretly giving the Doctor an _I told you so_ look. "You know us, dropping by when you least expect it."

"Forgive me but do you have anything to identify yourself?"

"Yes! Yes we have." Donna poked the Doctor in his ribs.

The Doctor flashed the psychic paper in the man's face. For a minute or so, the professor read what ever he thought was written on the empty sheet of paper, and nodded.

"Forgive me for asking, but we usually get a letter well in advance from your office to warn us that you are coming."

"Yes new policy I am afraid. The office wanted us to try the element of surprise. We're desperate to catch you off guard." The Doctor rambled, giving him a toothy grin. Professor van der Kamp smiled nervously back at him, but was clearly not at ease.

"So." The Doctor continued in a more serious mode. "No time like the present. Can you show us around in your lab?"

**2.**

Cathy woke up the next morning on Rob's couch. She had a killer headache and a nasty taste in her mouth as if she had just licked the sweat from a camel's armpit. Disorientated and groggy, she followed the noise of loud snoring through the apartment till she found Rob sleeping in his bedroom with his clothes still on. She hesitated if she should wake him, but then she recalled the crazy things that she had said to him last night. Feeling quite embarrassed, she wrote him a thank you note instead, and left it on the coffee table before she sneaked out of the apartment.

Arriving at her own terrace house she found the front door left open. There was a noise of a vacuum cleaner coming from the street level flat, and she assumed it was misses Lauren, keeping herself busy with her pathological way of housekeeping. Climbing up the staircase to get to her flat, she was met by one of misses Lauren's cats. The black and white feline was staring at her with his tail sweeping and curling into a question mark. Cathy didn't really like cats that much, and she certainly didn't want them in her home. It seemed that misses Lauren's pets had two sets of morals, they were clean and tidy and all sweetness with misses Lauren, and they were obnoxious and aggressive when Cathy was around. Oh, and for some reason, they considered her apartment to be some sort of giant kitty litter box. Better not to let this one slip pass her. But as she discovered fairly quickly, the front-door to her flat was left open as well, and the black cat sneaked inside as soon as it she approached.

"Oh no, not again." She moaned. "Misses Lauren, one of your cat got in!" She shouted down the staircase. She had to catch him before he ruined her carpet and furniture, but she really didn't like getting those nasty long cat-claws hanging in her skin again. "Can you please help me to get him out?" She shouted, and saw the black cat flee into the living room. She followed, only to find him leaping up the legs of a strange man who was facing the window. The cat climbed on his shoulder like he was a tall friendly tree and peeked back at her with a look of pure discontent.

Cathy was unpleasantly surprised. "Who are you? What the hell are you doing here?" She studied the stranger. He was tall man in a long coat that was broad at the shoulders and thin around the waist. His blue eyes shone bright in his pale complexion.

Before she got an answer out of him, misses Lauren appeared, balancing a tray with cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits up the stairs. "Ah you have already met the new tenant. Good. Good. Cathy, this is mister Oakdown. He came to see the apartment this morning and has just decided to take it. Isn't that wonderful?" She cheered.

"No…not really." Cathy mumbled, but not loud enough to be heard above her landlady's chatter.

"Here you go." Misses Lauren said as she handed the cup over to her guest. "Careful now, it's quite hot."

"Thank you misses Lauren." He replied politely while he stroked her cat. "What a delightful pet you've got here."

"Oh my Tommy is such a sweet thing. Mind you he's getting quite old, but he's still a little tiger sometimes and can get a bit moody."

"Really, you wouldn't say by the look of him." And as if on signal the damned cat started to purr like a well-oiled engine.

"Ah, look at you two." The landlady said, touched by the sight. "Getting along so well! It's almost a miracle. Cathy doesn't like Tommy much, do you Cathy?"

"Misses Lauren. Can I speak to you for a moment?" Cathy managed to get her landlady out of the room and into the kitchen where she hoped that they were out of earshot.

"Something wrong dear?" Misses Lauren asked innocently.

"Are you really going to rent out Grace's room to him?"

"It's not Grace's room anymore. She moved out yesterday remember?"

"Please misses Lauren, I don't want to share the flat with him."

"What's wrong with mister Oakdown? He seems like a nice person."

"He's a man. I don't want to live with a strange man. Can't you wait till a woman shows up who wants to rent the flat?"

"Cathy dear, I do like you, and I don't want to upset you or anything, but you know you can't pay the rent on your own. You need a flatmate, and mister Oakdown has already agreed to pay for four months in advance. That's more than you still owe me darling. I am sorry but I need the money to fill up my retirement pension. At least Grace was always in time with the payments."

"I know, I know, and I am sorry." Cathy sighed, realizing that she didn't have a leg to stand on. "I swear I will try to pay you this month." Although she had no idea where to get the money now she was out of a job. She would be lucky if misses Lauren didn't kick her out, let alone that she could complain about her enforcing her awful choice of tenant on her.

"Oh dearie, it's not too bad. I am sure you will grow to like him once you get to know each other a little better. He's a very polite and charming, you will see. Go in and sit down. Talk to him." She shoved her out of the kitchen and into the living room, where her new roommate was making himself quite at home and was lounging in her favorite chair while Misses Lauren's cat snoozed on his lap, all rolled up like a content little ball of fur and purring like an idiot. Encouraged by her landlady, Cathy forced herself to smile at him and shook his hand.

"Hi. I am Cathy Summerfield." She introduced herself, rather awkwardly.

"Martin Oakdown. You may call me Martin, if you please. So we are going to be flatmates." It wasn't so much as a question, but more of an announcement.

"So misses Lauren told me. Yeah. So uhm, where are you from?" Cathy asked, trying to start up a conversation.

"What do you mean?" He asked, calmly sipping from his coffee.

"Well, you don't sound Dutch. I mean you speak Dutch, but you've got an accent."

Do I?" He gazed at her with one eyebrow raised, pulling a face like the notion was completely ludicrous to him. "Hmm. I must say I haven't practice it for a while. It has never been one of my favorite languages. Too many Rs that are violated beyond repair, and your O's are pronounced in a very funny way."

"Right…" Cathy muttered, as she swallowing the insult. "So you're not from around here then?" She concluded.

"Oh no." He snorted, as if the idea alone was preposterous. He put the cup down and crossed his legs while he spread his arms over the back of the chair. "No I am not." He added, giggling.

A long awkward silence followed in which they just kept staring at each-other…Or rather he kept staring at her with his sharp blue eyes and she didn't know where to look to escape his gaze.

"Maybe we should go through the house rules before you decide." Cathy tried.

He furrowed his brows. "Didn't you hear your landlady? I have already decided to take the flat. I've even already paid."

"Yes I know, but maybe we should go through them anyway, to make this whole flat sharing experience more pleasant for us both." She forced herself another smile. She was actually starting to feel her jaws. "So you'll get Grace's room. That's the room at the back, and we share the kitchen, living room and the bathroom. Now I am used to that the top shelves in the fridge are mine, and Grace always took the lower shelves, so if you don't mind, you can have the lower shelves and the vegetable drawers if you like. I tend to turn in at 11. If you're going to use the livingroom after that, I would really appreciate it if you keep quiet and if you watch telly, turn the sound volume below 6. That's what Grace used to do and we got along fine. Now about the use of the bathroom –""

"Oh this is absolutely excruciating." The Master moaned under his breath, and slapped the cat off his lap in irritation.

"I am sorry, did you say something?" Cathy asked.

"Yes." The Master replied, accentuating each word with an air of exhaustion. "I said you were absolutely excruciating."

Cathy cocked her head and knit her brows together. "Wh-?!"

"Enough." He snapped his fingers and time inside the tiny flat stopped immediately. The cat was caught in a midway jump between the chair and the table, while Cathy was stuck with her nose wrinkled up and her mouth half open to pronounce the remaining letters of the word "what".

"Thank Gallifrey." The Master muttered to himself. "Finally, a moment of peace. If I have to listen another second to that mindless gibberish my head is going explode." He studied Cathy for a moment, wondering how on earth a woman like that was ever going to be any use to him. She reminded her too much of that loudmouth Redhead that was now tailing behind the Doctor all the time, and wasn't she supposed to be clever? He sighed and contemplated his options. It would be so much easier to get inside her head and just force her to do what he wanted, just like he did with that old woman from downstairs, but unfortunately he needed to preserve her. Any manipulation, however small, had a chance to turn these frail humans into catatonic vegetables. It was crucial that Cathy's mind remained intact. It seemed extremely fragile to him as it was already: Cathy Summerfield wasn't exactly what you call the brightest star in the galaxy. In fact, the Master regarded her perhaps one step higher on the intelligence scale than a glass of seamonkeys. He just couldn't take the risk. He needed whatever small brilliance that was hidden inside this chaotic mess of a woman. He also couldn't stand the bloody thought of keep listening to this endless drivel either, which left him only one other option.

He tilted his head up and forced time to speed up. He couldn't do this nifty trick everywhere and every time, and he could certainly not do it on a grand scale, but at certain time points where events were not so important and were not fixed, he could manipulate it just enough to make life a little easier for himself. So he sat back and enjoyed his coffee, while Cathy continued to talk and talk and talk to him in a high pitch chipmunky voice, while the cat darted from the table onto his lap to the floor and on the table again like it was high on catnip. When he finally saw her close her mouth for a long period of time, he simply tilted his head again and time slowed back down to normal speed.

"Right." Cathy inhaled deeply. She had gotten quite flustered after her long speech, but these things really needed to be sorted out before he could move in. Her new flatmate actually turned out better than she expected him to be, at least he was a good listener. "That's all I have to say. What about you?"

"Hmm?" The Master had a slightly distracted look on him when he gazed up at her.

"Do you have something that you need to share? Anything that I should know about you? Like any bad habits?"

"Oh, well, let me see." He paused, pretending to be thinking it through. "Oh I do like to play loud instruments. I mean you should see me on the drums at 4:30 in the morning, it's like I am on fire!" He laughed before he continued. "What else? Oh I used to do cocaine. I am not too shameful to admit it, especially since I was prime minister of Britain at that time, which meant I could do whatever the hell I liked. I've stopped though, because I couldn't afford it anymore, and to be honest I found the supposed exhilarating effects rather marginal. I was also a practicing cannibal for a few months, but I couldn't quite adapt to the trampy life style that was associated with it, so I gave that up as well. Oh, and also my doctor has more than once diagnosed me as a homicidal psychopath, and before you ask, no I am not in therapy and I am not taking any medication for that, not at this moment." He gave her a wide toothy grin and winked at her.

"But enough chitchat about me." He continued, since Cathy's only reaction was a baffled wide-eyed silence. "Let's talk about the more important things in life." He leaned forward, suddenly showing real interest in the conversation. "How is work treating you?" He purred in a most friendly voice.

"Work?" Cathy mouthed, still wondering if he had been joking to her or that she was really so unfortunate to get a genuine nut-job to share her flat. "I am sorry, but can we go back to that bit about you being a part-time cannibal?" She asked worriedly, just when her phone started to ring.

"Because I am sure that I must have misunderstood you, and I don't want to-"

"Aren't you going to answer it?" The Master interrupted her. "It might be important."

_Not as important as sorting out whether you're a scary weirdo. _Cathy thought, but the phone kept ringing rather urgently. _Maybe it's the hospital and something is wrong with Anne. _Getting concerned, she got up and picked up the horn. "Hello, Cathy here."

"Cathy, it's me!" Rob spoke through the phone. "Where the hell have you been? I've been trying to call you on your mo-." He stopped, and slapped himself, suddenly remembering that she didn't have her mobile with her last night.

"Oh Rob I am sorry. You were still sleeping so I thought I better left you alone. I wrote you a note, I left it on the table before I went out."

"Yes, yes. Never mind that." Rob said, sounding quite stressed. "Listen Cathy, Lance called. He went back to work to finish his cell culture experiment this morning. You will never believe this, but he found Duinkerk in the storage room nearby the service elevator. He was lying on the floor."

"Oh no. Did he call for an ambulance? Is he all right?"

"No not really." He paused for a moment, trying to think up a way to bring this to her gently. "He is dead Cathy."

"Dead?"

"Yep. Dead."

"What the hell happened? Did he have a heart attack or something?"

"Possibly, but I wouldn't say that that was the primary cause of death. The professor was missing his head. He was decapitated. They found bits of his brain lying all around the hall next to the vending machine."

"Oh my God." She gasped. "That's horrible!"

"Cate, I know what you said last night doesn't have anything to do with this, but the cops are now in the department and are investigating this."

"What, the police? Why? Why the police?" She panicked.

"Well I am no expert, but probably because it's quite unnatural for someone to die this way. At least I don't know any medical conditions in which your head spontaneously explodes." Rob explained, trying to restrain his sarcasm. "Listen Cathy, and try to stay calm. They are calling everyone in. We have to report ourselves at the police station."

"What? But I didn't do anything!"

"Yes I know. That's why I told you to stay calm."

"I only was saying that I wish he was dead. I didn't really mean any of it."

"Cathy! Please! This is no time to lose your head!" Rob urged, wincing at the unintended pun. "Just go to the police station. I will be there waiting for you outside. We're going to do this together, and everything is going to be fine. Okay?"

"Okay." Cathy nodded fervently.

"And?" The Master asked after she hung up.

"W-what?"

"Was it important?" He asked.

"Uhm yes. Yes it was. I need to go." She grabbed her coat and bag and rushed out of the living room. Before she went out of the door, she remembered something and turned around. "If you are really going to stay, would you be so kind to –"

"Yes I will kick the cat out." Came his reply. "And I will lock the door before I go."

"Thanks." Cathy murmured, wondering if her new roommate was now turning out to be a psychic as well, and ran down the stairs with two steps at the time.

**_TBC, meanwhile please comment or review._**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**1.**

"And this is our DNA test lab. All the chemicals are of course handled and stored following the latest EU-safety guidelines." Professor van der Kamp informed the Doctor and Donna as he guided them through the last laboratory of the department. "Right, and that's about it. There's not much more I can show you. If you want to take a look at our licenses we can go back to my office and I can go through the paperwork with you."

"Nah, that wouldn't be necessary." The Doctor cast a glance around the white washed lab space with shelves filled with mysterious bottles. To Donna they seemed to contain nothing but clear water, although the enigmatic scribbles on the labels indicated otherwise. "Our colleagues can check on that next time, we're more the field researcher type of people." He spotted doctor Grant sitting behind a microscope. The young scientist seemed to be extremely intrigued by the content of a dead mouse's stomach.

"And what this young man working on?" The Doctor asked enthusiastically. Felix Grant looked up from his work and, noticing the Doctor and Donna standing behind him, turned to professor van der Kamp with a look of pure irritation on his face.

"This is professor Felix Grant." His old mentor introduced him. "He's one of the top researchers in the field of regenerative medicine and my star protégée." Felix coughed when the professor gave him a friendly slap on his shoulder. "Felix, this is dr. John Smith and dr. Donna Noble, two inspectors from the health and safety department. They are here to pay us a surprise visit."

"How do you do?" The Doctor shook Felix's hand. Donna did the same. "A doctor?" Felix Grant muttered, studying the pair.

"Felix. There are two doctors here. Don't forget dr. Noble." The old professor said, keen to remind him to stay polite.

"Really?" He flashed him a smile that border-lined on sarcasm. "And since when does the national health and safety department employ doctors now to do this mind-numbing job?"

"Well, at least we probably get better pay than you do." Donna replied sharply.

"What a waste of keen academic minds this must be." Felix murmured, and glared at her with the same mild interest that he reserved for studying a chimp performing sign language.

"May we speak to prof. Grant alone?" The Doctor asked professor van der Kamp.

"To Felix? Are you sure?" The old professor was clearly hesitant to leave the pair alone with him.

"Random survey of the employees. It's just standard procedure. Don't worry. We're not shutting you down…well at least not today." The Doctor laughed.

The old professor joined in rather nervously.

"What do you say Felix, could you spare some time?"

"Why not?" Felix replied. "It's not every day that we get a visit from inspectors so fine and thorough." He peeled off his latex gloves, tossed them in the bin and leaned back in his chair with his hands supporting his head. "Fire away."

"Maybe I should stay." Van der Kamp opted, fearing that this might not end well.

"Oh come on George, don't you have papers to write, experiments to do? You can leave these two to me. I promise that I'll play nice." Grant replied, radiating pure arrogance.

As soon as they were left alone with Grant, the Doctor put on his thick-rimmed glasses and examined the pink slippery mess that lay spread out in the petridish.

"Oh that looks interesting."

"What's so interesting?" Grant asked.

"The lining of the stomach." The Doctor muttered, fascinated by the bits and pieces that the young scientist had removed from the tiny carcass. "This mouse is what? 2 years old? 2 and half? This should be riddled with small cancerous polyps, but it's as smooth as a baby's bottom. No signs of cancer whatsoever." The Doctor stole a pincer from Grant and started picking through the rest of organs. "Bowels, liver, spleen and kidneys, all in perfect condition. They look like they belong to a young animal on a healthy diet with plenty of exercise. Do you keep them in cages with those little running wheels? Oh I bet they do two times the marathon each night. Look at those hindlimbs, this is a mouse on steroids!"

Felix Grant crossed his arms and regarded the Doctor with a mixed look of surprise and growing resentment. "How did you know that this one is two and a half year old?"

The Doctor took off his glasses and looked at him as if Grant was now the ignorant one. "Well, isn't it obvious?" He asked innocently, driving an angry flush on the cheeks of the young scientist. It was exactly at these moments that Donna completely adored her crazy Doctor.

"This specimen was treated with the biogenic stem cells." Grant pointed out, infuriated that he was being outsmarted, and eager to regain the upper hand. "It is absolutely undistinguishable from the younger animals. You could not have noticed it!"

"Oh I know you can change a lot with genetic engineering, but what you cannot hide are these seemingly insignificant adaptations to life that this little animal had made to survive for so long." The Doctor answered knowingly. He pointed at the snout. "See these whiskers here? They keep on growing throughout a rodent's life. These ones are far too long for a young adult. Also –" Donna felt a bit nauseated when the Doctor dipped a finger into the mushy grey mass of the dissected brain. "This neo-cortex is packed with neuron connections, it's stiff with use and stored knowledge. This isn't the flexible brain of a young animal."

"Please…don't do that." Donna muttered, feeling her breakfast coming up.

"Dr. Noble seems rather sensitive to these matters." Felix remarked with suspicion. "Never performed animal experiments before?"

"Don't mind her. She's not feeling very well. Must be something she ate this morning. The breakfast buffet in our hotel was a bit dodgy." The Doctor lied.

"Oh please, don't even mention food." She objected.

"Tell me, how do the cells look like? Do they stop aging as well?" The Doctor continued, trying to distract Felix Grant from keeping an eye on Donna.

"That's not how this works." Grant replied sharply. "Hey! What are you doing? Don't touch that!" But before he could stop him, the Doctor had already picked up one of the glass slides that were lying around on the bench and popped it underneath a microscope.

"Oh and look at this liver tissue." The Doctor exclaimed as he gazed through the binoculars. "The cells look perfectly normal, no sign of abnormalities what so ever! And this is what?" He checked the label. "A mouse of 4 years old? Oh that's very clever! What did you do? Elongate their telomeres to stop their DNA from fragmenting? Make them produce enzymes that protect them against oxidative stress?"

"Oh please. Those strategies have long since been proven to be ineffective. You're referring to studies that have been performed in the late 1990s. We're living in the year 2020 now." Felix Grant snorted in contempt.

"Is it?" The Doctor noted, faking surprise. "Sorry, my mistake. I have not kept up with the literature for a while. You know how it goes. Government job, just pushing papers around all day, no time to exercise that big grey mass up here." The Doctor said, pointing at his head with a big silly grin. "So what exactly did you do? What's the scientific miracle behind all this? It must be something really clever. It has the marks of a true genius written all over it." He added, shamelessly feeding the young scientist's arrogance.

"That's a contradiction in terms Doctor. A miracle is based on ignorance. It is in its essence inexplicable. My work on the other hand is achieved and can be explained by science. Therefore, it cannot be called a miracle." Grant answered haughtily.

"Oh I don't know, creating life, even if the entire process is know from the first division of cells till the very first breath taken by the newborn, it remains one of the last great questions still unanswered, doesn't it? I mean the spark of life, where does that come from? Nobody really knows. Now the end of life, that's much more transparent. An injection with the needle, and you can start that process in these little creatures whenever you like." He stared silently at Grant, reading into his eyes all of his ambition and greed. "And after years of studying it, you think that you finally understand it." The Doctor whispered. "You might even believe that you grasp the science of death so thoroughly that at last you will even be able stop it." The Doctor stepped up to him, his eyes still fixed sternly on Grant. "Call me old-fashioned, but if someone succeeds in such an impossible task, that is indeed a true miracle to me." The Doctor said softly, challenging him.

"It's not impossible." Felix Grant replied. "Not if you're smart enough to figure out how." A strange smile appeared on his face that reminded Donna of the white washed smile of a shark rising from the deep. "You want to see your miracle doctor? Shall I show you?"

"Astonish me." The Doctor told him with a smile as cold as his.

Felix Grant led the Doctor and Donna into a smaller lab at the back. The walls here were lined with glass cabinets. Sitting in front of one of them was a technician who was busy pipetting a translucent liquid that had the color of pink lemonade into a petridish through two holes that were sealed by rubber gloves.

"Safety level 3 culture facilities." Felix Grant explained. "Not that what we are doing here poses any danger to public safety of course. We culture these cells with the sole purpose of bringing them to the clinic to treat our patients one day, So we have to take every precaution to keep them clean of any contaminating factors. In fact, the animal facilities, the culture labs and the incubators for keeping the cells are all connected and monitored by one central system."

"So you're not taking any chances." The Doctor commented.

"Patients?" Donna remarked. "Age is not a disease. You're going to earn big money from rich pensioners and faded movie stars you mean?"

"Of course, I do offer treatment to whoever can afford it. One thing I cannot stand is hypocrisy. I've never said that this was all done for the good of humankind." Felix Grant flashed her a shameless smile. "I am not an idiot dr. Noble. I know what my inventions are worth. Like my sponsors, I want a good return on my investments."

He took a stack of petridishes out of an incubator and placed one of them under a nearby microscope. "Take a look." He told Donna, stepping aside. Donna peered through the binoculars and saw a whole bunch of transparent spindle like shapes stuck on the bottom of the plate. "What are these things?" She whispered to the Doctor, who examined the petridish after her.

"Neuron cells or human brain cells, if I am not mistaken." The Doctor concluded out-loud.

"They are indeed." Grant replied. "Isolated from donated bodies and notoriously difficult to grow because their capacity to renew themselves is very limited." He took the dish to one of the glass cabinets and added the pink solution before placing it back under the microscope for the Doctor to reexamine. "But now, watch what happens after I've added the stem cells."

As soon as the stem cells that looked like round transparent spheres came in contact with the human brain cells, they started to transform, adapting their shape into that of the neuron cells.

"This is happening way too fast." The Doctor was hardly believing his own eyes. "What have you done to them?"

Felix Grant smirked. "I showed you the miracle. If I told you how it was done you would probably be disappointed."

Donna leaned over the Doctor's shoulder and peered through the microscope. To her, the cells didn't look quite so remarkable, although they were growing very fast indeed.

"This is not natural." The Doctor said sternly, standing up to face Grant. "Stop with what you're doing. You're out of your dept here."

"Don't call everything what you cannot understand unnatural." Grant replied. "I am a genius." He added defensively. "You're just ordinary. That's why this is so puzzling to you. To me, the solution was only logical."

"You're lying." The Doctor stepped deliberately away from him. His hand swept over the bench unnoticed. "You didn't think of this yourself."

"What? Are you calling me a fraud?" Grant asked, seemingly infuriated.

"Oh no…I am calling you a liar. That's all." The Doctor answered, letting his hand slip back inside his pocket.

For a moment, Donna thought that Felix Grant was going to fly right off the handle, but instead he just gazed back at the Doctor, unblinking, before rolling with his eyes. "I don't want you here in my lab." He concluded in a calm and controlled voice that somehow sounded even more threatening to her than the expected tirade. "I want you both to leave now. I have better things to do than to entertain a couple of nosy nobodies." He picked up the petridishes and put them back inside the incubator.

"Come Donna. We've seen enough." The Doctor said, briskly making his way out of the culture lab.

"Bye!" Grant shouted after them in a strange upbeat tune that gave Donna the creeps. "Don't trip and break your necks on your way out."

"What was going on?" Donna asked, following the Doctor.

"Those miracle cells are definitely not Grant's own creation. In fact, I am pretty sure that they are not even from this planet."

"You mean they're alien cells? Where did they come from?"

"I am not sure. I will need to take a better look at them first."

They were just stepping inside the elevator when professor van der Kamp spotted them on their way out. "Ah, Dr. Smith. Dr Noble. Leaving us already? Did everything go well?"

"Great!" The Doctor lied. "Mind you, we will probably be back. That doctor Grant is an absolute delight to talk to. Would you thank him for his time?"

"Oh I will." The old professor hurriedly replied before the elevator doors closed. "But next time, do send us an official letter, will you?"

"That's not going to work." Donna said. "Grant's never going to let us back in. Not after what you just said to him."

"I guess you're probably right." The Doctor replied, faking a sigh. He rummaged inside his pocket and brought out a closed testtube with a pink liquid inside to show it to her. "I still need to take a better look at those alien cells though." He gave her boyish smirk. "Now, I wonder where I've left that old microscope. I am pretty sure I moved it to the storage room in the attic last time I did spring cleaning in the Tardis."

**2.**

Cathy was still rattled when she left the police station. She had been kept there for a good two hours, and most of it was spent waiting in the crammed seating area with Rob. When she was finally been called in, she was so nervous that they could have just said one wrong word to her and she would have completely lost it. _Yes she did call prof. Duinkerk an old Cheapgoat, and yes, she did wish he was dead last night, but that didn't mean she made it really happen! Please don't throw me in jail! I am really not a jail-person, and it's going to look mightily bad on my CV, which is already not much to start with. Please don't charge me with murder!_

But of course, she did not need to worry. The security guards downstairs in the hall had seen her leave with Robert well before Duinkerk lost his head. There was even actual security camera footage of professor's last terrifying moments that registered the exact time of the crime. She knew this, because the nice policeman who was conducting the investigation showed it to her, and had told her to really pay attention in case she might notice something unusual. She didn't. The back room and the surroundings of the service elevator all appeared normal…Except perhaps for the fact that Duinkerk was in one shot still begging for his life to someone hidden off screen, and decapitated in the next, with his head severed from his neck up and flying in the air. She actually missed the last part of the footage because she had to rush out to be sick in the bathroom, but at least they didn't make her watch it again.

"Do you want me to walk you home Cate?" Rob asked, noticing how spooked she looked. They were standing outside the police station and it was starting to get dark. The street lights behind them were switching on one by one. Cathy just shook her head. "No. I'm okay." With the craziness behind her, she suddenly remembered that Grace had moved out yesterday, and that she was going to have to live with her new flatmate pretty soon. She didn't feel much like going home.

"You're sure?"

She shook her head. "I am not going home directly. I think I am going to see my sister first. I haven't visited her for a while."

"Cathy…" Rob tried, reading in her wariness a trace of guilt. "What happened to Duinkerk wasn't your fault."

"I know." Occupied with her thoughts she started to walk away from her friend. "It's not that. I just need to get some fresh air. On my own." She added, to further discourage him from coming along.

When she sat in the tram on the way to the hospital, she kept wondering why did she not tell that policeman that the old prof had been horrible to her. Instead she told him nothing but lies about what a kind and understanding boss Duinkerk was. She didn't even mention the fact that she was fired by him. What was she going to do on Monday? Go back to work like nothing had happened? _Why not?_ She thought. Nobody-else knew about this except for herself and Rob, and he would never tell on her. _Duinkerk died before he could sign anything to make it official. It was such a macabre coincidence. It was almost like she really did make it happen…_She shivered at that thought, even though the evening was still warm and the stagnant air inside the tram was stifling.

Arriving at the hospital, she went straight up to the 11th floor to the intensive care ward. She greeted misses Veels when she passed by her station. The cheerful plump nurse had looked after Anne since she had been brought here and knew Cathy well.

"Evening my dear." He replied cheerfully. "Haven't seen you for a while. You're coming for a late visit?"

"I still have half an hour before visiting hours are over right?" Cathy glanced at her watch.

"Oh yes. Go right in. By the way, your friend is here. He's been waiting for you for quite a while now."

Cathy stopped dead in her tracks. "My what?"

"I'm sorry, I forgot his name. A young man, quite handsome and very tall. He's been with Anne since the dinner service."

"I would never bring anyone to see her. You know that." Cathy couldn't belief what she was hearing. "You leave a stranger alone with my sister?" With her heart racing in her chest, she ran down the corridor to get to Anne. When she rushed inside the room she was shocked to find her new flatmate sitting beside her unconscious sibling. The sight of him holding on to Anne's hand was enough to make her completely lose it.

"You! Get away from her!" She screamed, just when misses Veels came rushing in.

"What's going on? What's the matter?" The nurse asked, looking quite shocked by Cathy's response.

"This man." Cathy pointed out angrily. "I don't know him. Why did you let him in?"

"What do you mean, you don't know me?" The Master contradicted her. "I am your new flatmate. We've just spoken this morning."

"But…he said he knew you." Nurse Veels apologized, blinking her eyes in confusion. "Actually. I don't really know why I let him in. Of course I should have called and checked with you first. It's completely against hospital policy." She covered her mouth and stifled a cry when she realized what she had done. "I am sorry Cathy, I don't know what got into me." She uttered, glancing at the Master. "He just seemed so trustworthy."

"Him?!" Cathy was practically having a fit. "This coke sniffing psychopath who's been stalking me all day?"

"Really, from all the things I said, you only remember that bit? I wasn't stalking you. I found the address of the hospital in one of your notebooks." The Master stated as he stood up and brushed his suit straight.

"Shall I call security?" Nurse Veels opted, realizing that she had made a horrible mistake.

"If you don't, I certainly will!" Cathy watched the nurse rush out to get on the phone. "Get out!" She shouted at the Master after gathering her courage. "Get out or they will drag you out!"

"Do you know how irrational you sound right now?" The Master replied with growing irritation. "You don't know my intentions. You don't even ask why I am here, and yet you presume that I want to harm you or your sister. Tell me, on what experience do you need to draw this conclusion? I can't remember that I have threatened to kill you this morning, did I?" As he came closer to her, his presence became quite intimidating. Cathy suddenly lost her nerves and spun around to get away from him. She ran right into nurse Veels who stood behind her with her one hand still reaching out for the door handle. It shocked Cathy that bumping into her felt like walking into a solid brick wall.

"I know." He raised his hands, trying to calm her. "Don't be alarmed. I don't want you to scream. Not that it would do you any good…I just…don't want you to scream." He actually would rather pierce both his eardrums with the blunt end of a wooden spoon then to listen to Cathy's hysteric high pitched shrieking again. "I want you to shut up, and listen to me." The Master continued in a calm but demanding voice.

Cathy slowly turned around and stared at him with her eyes wide and her mouth dropped open. "What happened?" She gasped. Not sure that what she had experienced was real, she pocked into the nurse's chest. Instead of sticking her finger into plump elastic flesh, she touched something that was very much the equivalent of rock-hard granite. "She's not moving." She muttered.

"Do remember that part about not screaming." The Master warned her, recognizing that look of blind panic on her face.

Frightened, she checked the nurse's breath. "She's not even breathing. What the hell have you done to her?! Is she dead?!"

"Please." The Master said, wincing at the volume and the pitch of her voice. "She's not dead. I just stopped her. I stopped everything. In fact, nothing inside this room will move. Time completely stands still in here, unless I release it again."

"You…_stopped_…time?"

"It's not too difficult if you know how. Well I mean it's not difficult for me, for you it's certainly impossible. But then again, I can't hold that against you. I am practically omnipotent now…with certain restrictions. Which leads you to the conclusion that -?" He waited for her to provide the right answer to him, hoping to see just a glimpse of intelligence from his future partner.

"Oh my God…" Cathy mumbled. "You are a complete nutter!"

"No. No that's not right." The Master said tired and irritated. "Look, are you even trying or do your neurons just fire at random?"

"I knew it!" Cathy rambled on, quickly backing away from him with the eagerness of someone who was locked up with a rabid dog. "With my luck, how can my new flatmate ever turn out to be normal!"

"What are you doing…" He frowned as he watched her reach for her mobile. "Oh I wouldn't do that. Trying to phone someone while you're temporarily placed outside the main time-stream can have some very grave consequences. Put that away! You don't want to cause a juxtapositioned space-time paradox..."

"There is no signal…" Cathy muttered, tapping the mobile with the flat of her hand desperately, and getting more and more into panic mode. "No dial-tune…nothing!"

"Or it wouldn't work. Obviously." The Master quickly corrected himself.

"Stay away from me!" She grabbed blindly in her bag and shoved a pink spraycan in his face. "I've got mace, and I am not afraid to use it!"

"Oh please, that is a can of hairspray." The Master replied, rolling his eyes.

"No it's not…" She mumbled, defeated when she realised that he was right.

"Look, I have quite enough of this charade." The Master said, waving his hands in frustration. "Tell me, what do I need to do to convince you that that I can really alter time and space?"

Cathy didn't say a word but kept staring at him as if he was dangerous lunatic. The Master sighed and glanced around the room. He noticed the vase with flowers sitting on the nightstand next to Anne's bed.

"How about this?" A small gesture with his hand and the roses and lilies closed, folding their pedals over their yellow hearts while their vibrant colors faded and reverted into green.

"H-how did you do that?" Cathy stammered.

He was glad that he had finally caught her attention in the right way. "It's simple. I just reversed time."

"No." Cathy shook her head. She simply didn't want to belief this, not even after what she just saw. "No! It can't be! That's impossible."

The Master, fed up with her stubborn refusal to accept his supremacy, waved his hand in the direction of the time-frozen nurse, and before Cathy's very eyes, the woman who had been in her mid-forties began to age.

Her skin was sagging. The cheeks were hollowing out. Wrinkles began to appear and deepen around the eyes, the mouth, her forehead and neckline. Her statue began to shrink and bend, shriveling away of old age, while her chestnut hair turned grey, then white before it began to fall out in large handfuls of brittle thin threads.

"No! Stop it! Stop it!" Cathy yelled, realizing that this could not go on forever. "You're gonna kill her!"

But Master did not stop. He kept his hand turned on the unfortunate nurse, allowing the aging process to continue. The woman was now well beyond 100 years old. Her head looked like a skull. Her ancient body was a mere skeleton with every bone and every sinew visible underneath a ruined bag of withering skin.

"All right! I believe you!" Cathy finally admitted. "I believe everything you say!" Stop it! Please! Don't turn her into a corpse!"

The Master gave a meaningful look. "You promise to shut up and listen?"

"Yes. Yes, I promise. Just…Stop with whatever you're doing to her."

"All right." He lowered his hand and the destructive process immediately ceased.

Cathy pushed out a deep breath in relief, before she looked at him again with large frightened eyes.

"What?" He snorted. "You want me to turn her back as well?"

"Please. You can't leave her like this." Cathy begged.

He sighed. "If you insist." A snap of the Master's fingers, and the hideous transformation was reversed. The nurse was once again her flabby 40-year old self. Even the flowers in the vase were back in full bloom.

There was a long pause before she dared to open her mouth again. "Who are you?" She whispered after she had regained some of her wits.

"Finally, a sensible question."He sighed.

"What do you want from me? Why are you here?"

"I've been following you. You, and your sister Anne." He stared at the woman who was lying in the hospital bed. Seeing her sleeping so peacefully touched his hearts, but he wouldn't allow it show. "I've been watching over you two ever since you were children."

"What are you talking about?"

"I was there when the accident happened." He turned to her. "That one dreadful day in the summer from which you will always remember how the air smelled of dry grass and salt from the sea. When the French grain lorry driver forgot to signal that he was heading your way. That one dreadful moment in which you and Anne became orphans. When you were growing up, how many times did you cry yourself to sleep, believing that you have killed your parents because you distracted your dad from paying attention to the road? Tell me Cathy, do you still feel guilty?"

"How…" She swallowed, tears welled up in her eyes. "How can you possibly know this? I've never told anyone."

"If I can alter time, don't you think it will be also possible for me to return to the past?" He stepped closer, his blue eyes looking right into her soul. "I came to help you Cathy Summerfield." He said, his voice filled with sincerity. "Don't be afraid of me."

"Help me? Help me with what?"

"Your sister Anne. The doctors have diagnosed her with severe brain-trauma, irrecoverable damage to the reticular activating system and cerebral neocortex. They've told you that she'll never wake up again, but you couldn't accept that. Without her, you would have lost everything. So all your life you've been caring for your little sis, spending every waking hour of your existence trying to bring her back. You worked so hard, and yet have achieved so little." He paused, noticing the tears gliding down her face. "Oh don't be so ridiculous now. Don't be sad. I am not blaming you. It's not your fault. There were complicating circumstances, other people have stood in your way, and to be fair, however much clever you may be, you're just a human whose ancestors have just dropped out of a tree only a few million years ago. One truly cannot expect miracles when that many odds are stacked against you."

"What the _hell_ is your point?" Cathy asked, noticing that despite her fear she was actually getting quite annoyed with him for being so insulting.

"My point is, you must not think that your task is impossible. Don't give up on her. I will help you to bring her back."

"Why?" She asked, wiping the dampness from her eyes with the back of her hand. She suddenly remembered how he held on to Anne's hand when she first came into the room. "Why do you want to help us?"

"Just consider me as your guarding angel." He replied, keeping his secrets. "And hers." He gazed at Anne with a sudden sadness in his eyes.

Cathy didn't know what to think of him. Everything what had happened today was so bizarre and frightening, and had happened so fast. It was almost impossible for her to get a grip on reality. "Wait." She muttered, finally realizing something. "If you know everything about me…Are you responsible for what happened to prof. Duinkerk?"

"You mean did I murder him? Of course not." It was lie, but the Master was trying to gain the trust of his new companion, revealing the truth would only scare her away.

"Because you said something…about people standing in my way…" She rambled on.

"I am not a murderer. It was just his time to go. Besides, you don't seem to mourn his passing too much."

"What do you mean? I didn't want him to die."

"But it was convenient for you though, wasn't it? You didn't even mention the fact that he had fired you to the police, which I assume was because you still want to go back to work on Monday. Act like nothing has happened." He gave her a knowing smile. "And don't tell me you didn't think he deserved it, just a little?"

"You didn't murder him?" She asked, her own guilt slowly gaining the upper hand over her doubts.

Slowly and determinedly, he shook his head.

"And you want to help me?"

"Yes."

"What if I don't need it? What if I don't want your help?"

"I have not seen your future, but I can predict it quite accurately based on how things are now. You can toil all you like, but you won't be able to bring back Anne on your own." He leaned closer till she felt the warmth of his breath on her ear. "Come on Cathy." He whispered. "Accept my offer. Everyone needs a bit of help from time to time, a guiding light in the dark." His hand traveled down, following the line of her sleeves till his fingers gently touched hers. "You deserve it. _Anne_ deserves it."

He stared at her, eyes unblinking.

The voice of reason was shouting in the back of her mind that she was being manipulated, that he was feeding her lies, but she couldn't make herself listen to it. Not while the Master was speaking. She didn't really know why she trusted him, this strange, dangerous man with a voice so smooth as velvet, other than that she really wanted to believe in every word he said. So she closed her hand around his, and gave in.

"Clever girl." the Master smiled, and with that, he sealed the fates of his wife and his new companion.

_**TBC**_

_**Next chapter will be published next saturday. Please review and comment if you have the time.**_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**1.**

"This is bad, I mean really bad." The Doctor muttered as he examined the results of his last experiment.

"What is? Let me look." Donna glanced at the strange structure that was displayed on the computer-screen. The Doctor had taken the stolen stem cell sample back to the Tardis to run some tests. She was pretty annoyed with herself that after 24 long hours of waiting for him to come up with an answer, she didn't really know what she was looking at. "What am I supposed to see here?"

"It's DNA." The Doctor explained. "I've extracted it out of the cells to take a better look at the genetic code. See this helix structure on the right? That's human DNA. Looks perfectly normal. Now, compare that to the structure to the left."

"I am still not sure." Donna muttered, but then it struck her that the human DNA was composed out of 4 different colored blocks, whereas the DNA structure on the right was composed out of 5. "Wait a minute! I know! It's got an extra color!" She answered, pointing it out on the screen.

"Exactly, five instead of four. Human DNA, in fact all DNA of all the living things on this planet only has 4 types of building blocks."

"What? A red, a yellow, a blue and a green one?"

"Yes, I mean no. Oh forget about the colour, that's just a way to depict it." He rambled on, pacing around the Tardis core while his mind turned. "Look, DNA on earth is composed of four types of molecules called nucleic acids. Each color represents one of them. The DNA extracted from Grant's stem cells somehow has one extra type."

"So, it's like what? A mutation of some sort?"

The Doctor fervently shook his head. "A mutation simply means a change in the sequence of DNA. This is something else entirely."

Donna sighed and pulled the Doctor aside. "Oh can you stop running around like an idiot! I am getting dizzy. Just stand still, and explain it to me will you?"

"This is not from earth. In fact I only know one race that uses five building blocks to code their genes." A grave expression appeared on the Doctor's face. "This is Timelord DNA."

"If this is Timelord DNA, then what the flip is Grant doing with it? How did he get it in the first place?"

"Well I suppose you can synthesize it, make it up from scratch." The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair as he thought it through. "But it would almost be impossible to make the new sequence functional. It would be like trying to write something sensible after adding 5 new letters to the alphabet. It's a complete new language, you will not know what you're writing. However clever Felix Grant may be, it would take him a million years to decode this." He started pacing up and down again, his feet trying to catch up with the speed of his mind. "No, he could absolutely not have done this on his own, which means…"

"Rassilon." Donna opted, speaking out loud what the Doctor had already figured out.

"The Infinity cooperation." The Doctor nodded. "They're sponsoring his lectures and his research. It wouldn't surprise me if they gave him more than only financial backup."

"But what is he trying to do with it? Turn us all into Timelords drones?"

"Oh I don't think so. Rassilon is not yet corporeal. If there is anything he must desire the most right now it is certainly going to be that. He wants Grant to built him a new body that is strong enough to house the essence of a Timelord."

"But he has already taken Anne's. Why can't he just stay in there?"

"You know why." The Doctor replied. "You know what happens when you try to force the mind of a Timelord inside a human. Timelord metacrisis! Anne must be kept dormant or she will burn up. To Rassilon she is no more than a temporary storage vessel before something more permanent comes along."

"But Felix Grant can't just do that, can he?" Donna opted, still shocked and finding this hard to believe. "He can't make Rassilon corporeal, playing doctor Frankenstein with mice is one thing, but building a Timelord?"

The Doctor gazed grimly at her. "We must find out how much of the DNA sequence is already known. If the sequence is complete, we are all in serious danger."

"What about Anne? Does Felix Grant or the Infinity Corporation have her as well?"

"If they have her then she must be kept in stasis. The Master put up a shield to protect her mind from Rassilon's presence, but that is never going to hold forever. It's a race against the clock. The body must be ready before the mind shield has completely disintegrated, or Anne will die and Rassilon's essence will just disintegrate in a matter of seconds. All of their efforts will be in vain."

"But then there are two ways for us to stop this. We either find and destroy Rassilon's DNA so Grant and his army of white coats can forget about rebuilding the dead Timelord, or we try to find Anne..." Donna paused as she realized what that would actually mean. She looked up at the Doctor. "Oh no…You would never do that." She mumbled, convinced that the old Doctor, the dangerous Doctor who had so very mercilessly unleashed his deadly fury upon the Racnoss, would never return. "Besides, the Master will never let you harm her."

The Doctor gazed back at her, knowing what she meant. She was absolutely right. The Master's love for Anne was too deep, even death and regeneration could not have chanced that. "No…No he won't." He replied quietly.

_And that will be our undoing._

**2.**

"Did you get everything I asked?" The Master inquired, without looking up from behind the microscope. During the 8 hours that Cathy had been at work, he had transformed the tiny kitchen in their flat into something between a laboratory and a war zone. Cathy stepped cautiously over the piles of paper notes, broken glassware, and strange boxes filled with God-knows-what.

"What have you done in here?" She asked, searching in vain for an empty spot on the kitchen table to put her bags down.

"I've been working. I brought some of my stuff here that we need for the experiments. By the way, your kitchen is very badly equipped."

"That's because it's a kitchen and not a laboratory." She inspected the place. The kitchen had not exactly been spotless, but this was so much worse than it usually was. It was hard for her to believe that she had not accidentally wandered into a dumpster. "It looks like a bomb has exploded." She complained.

"I repeat my question. Have you got the things on my list? All of your notebooks?" He glanced at her sideways.

"I have them right here." She suppressed a sigh, realizing that it was no use nagging at him, and dumped her pile of labjournals on top of another pile, causing a landslide.

Fully ignoring her mild form of rebellion, he snapped his fingers at her impatiently. "Enzymes, cells, bio-solutions?"

She took the boxes out of the plastic freezer-bags and showed it to him. Most of it contained tubes of biological reagents that were used in the lab for DNA cloning, digestion enzymes, plasmids, that sort of stuff.

"I hope you have everything you need now, because I really don't feel comfortable going back and plundering the stocks for a second time." Cathy confessed.

"You probably will have to. This lot is not going to last forever." He mumbled after a quick glance. "I don't want you to go back during the day though. In fact, I don't want you to go to work at all."

"What?!" Cathy couldn't believe her ears. "You are telling me to quit my job?"

"Not quit. Just stay low for a couple of days. You don't want to attract any attention to yourself while I am around. You might get into trouble."

"What trouble? What are you talking about?"

"You don't need to know, just do as I tell you, and put those boxes in the fridge. You know how quickly this stuff loses its reactivity."

_Why do I even listen to this lunatic?_ Cathy thought, as she gathered the boxes to store them away.

"Did you go out?" She asked him instead, trying her best not to sound too aggravated with him.

"No. Why?"

"I thought you said you were going to take care of dinner tonight?"

"Did I?" He looked surprised. "I must have not been paying attention." He sniggered.

Cathy suppressed another sigh and opened the fridge. A horrible smell immediately assaulted her nose. Something black and fury lay in a small puddle of blood on the meat-shelf. It took her a moment for the horror sink in. "There is a dead cat in here." She finally said, trying hard to remain calm.

Yes?" He replied, seemingly not all affected by that strange message.

"There's one of misses Lauren's cats, in the fridge, _**dead**_!"

"I needed a test subject. You don't want me to go out and pluck a tramp from the streets, do you?"

"That's the black one, what was he called…Tommy. You killed Tommy. I though you liked Tommy?"

"Didn't like him. Hated him. He kept scratching his nails over my trousers. I just pretended to like him to not seem rude to our landlady."

"And it's not rude to kill her cat and stuff it in the fridge?"

"Look how many times are you going to pose the same question in a slightly different way to me? Yes, I killed her dammed cat. Don't scream!" he pointed out, fearing that one of her horrible high-pitched squeals was very imminent. "It's not like it's going to be dead forever."

Cathy crossed her arms over her chest and stared accusingly at him. "What? You're going to bring it back to life?" She felt a nervous giggle tickle the back of her throat as she said it. _I am living with a freak, who kills other people's pets and believes he's doctor Frankenstein. This is absolutely bonkers._

"You don't believe I can?" He gave her a frosty look that told her to be very careful now with what she was about to say.

"It's not that." Cathy replied softly. She suddenly remembered the sagging skin and the skull-like features of nurse Veels in the hospital, and the vase of flowers growing back into buds.

"Good." He mumbled, placing his focus back on whatever slap of suspicious-looking meat he was studying under the microscope. "Now stop fretting and take care of dinner. I am actually starving."

Cathy just wanted to scream in frustration, but decided that it was probably no use anyway. Counting slowly back from ten, she did what she was told and went through the cupboards. It was only now that she noticed that her own stomach was growling. Maybe she could make something simple. She found a can of bean in tomato sauce that she thought she could use.

"No beans for me thank you. Can't stand beans." He muttered under his breath.

She sighed, counted once again back from ten, then reached out for a package of pasta.

"Don't care much for pasta either. Can't you get something fresh from the shops?" He opted. "I've checked. There's not much left in the fridge. I only found a cucumber, a couple of tomatoes, and a piece of chicken breast that has probably absorbed a few nauseating odors by now, being stuck on the same shelf as our late Tommy. Not exactly what you call appetizing."

Cathy deliberately dropped the pack of pasta in the sink. "Tell me." She said in a voice that sounded surprisingly agitated in her ears, considering that she was trying very hard not to upset her scary psychopath flatmate. "Have you recently lived with someone for a very long time?"

He finally looked up from his work and stared at her, curious and alert. "Why do you ask?"

"Because if you have, it must have been someone exceptionally kind." She bitched. Turning back to the cupboard to find something-else to cook, she was lucky that she didn't catch the change of expression on his face.

He rose from his chair and walked out of the kitchen.

"Where are you going?" Cathy asked.

"I am going out. I've been locked in all day. I need some fresh air." He replied, clearly in a foul mood, and shrugged on his coat.

"What about diner? I thought you said you were hungry?" Cathy called after him, but he slammed the front door close without a further reply.

**3.**

He left the flat and walked out of the street. It would probably not last, but he was very aware that he still walked like a man who had recently returned to the world. His stride was careful and deliberate, and he relished every step. The fresh air did him good, and after a while his anger cleared. Still, he didn't feel much for returning to the apartment. Cathy would still be there, and he wasn't sure that he would be able to walk out for a second time before he lost his temper and accidently killed that woman. So he followed the tramline till he reached the long stretch of boulevard along side the river. There he stood for a while, facing the black shimmering water below as he watched the sun disappear behind the city's skyline. Soon it was dark, and the lights on the Erasmus cable-bridge switched on, transforming the great metal structure that sat across the river into a gigantic blue harp, bathing in a heavenly glow. The Master took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of diesel oil and slightly polluted river-water rising up from the river shore. He wondered if he was smoker. He used to enjoy smoking cigars, but never was addicted to them. Now he could murder someone for a stick of nicotine. Recalling his past-self automatically brought back memories of the Doctor. One seemed to be hopelessly inseparable of the other, and it caused his mood to darken again. He sighed and leaned over the railing, trying to distract himself from these most depressing thoughts.

Suddenly, he glanced up, a spider sensing a tingling. A quick inspection over his shoulder, but he only saw a pair of young lovers, strolling hand in hand over the deserted boulevard. No one else seemed to be there. But then again, the Master knew the Doctor better than anyone else. He smiled, and calmly he spun around, put his hands deep inside the pockets of his long coat and began to walk all the way up to the bridge, cautious to adjust his pace to ensure that the footsteps that fell in synchrony with his own were not fading. When he reached halfway across the river, he quickly turned the corner and hid behind one of the massive steel cables.

There he waited.

The footsteps that were following him continued till it was but a few feet away from where he stood. Then they stopped.

Silence. Only the sound of passing traffic, and the river flowing below their feet.

Hiding in the shadows, he could sense him. Loneliness and desperation was hanging around the Doctor like a dark shroud of mourning, the aura of a tattered, broken man, worn threadbare by grief.

Realizing that the other Timelord would let them both stand like this till the end of time if he stayed silent, the Master decided to speak first. "What happened to your manners Doctor?" Trying to sound casual as he stepped out into the light. "Don't you say hello to an old friend anymore?"

"Master." The Doctor paused, taking a good look at him. "So you want me to say hello then?"

"You've been following me around for at least 3 streets now. It's the least you can do."

"Hello." The Doctor said, lacking in his usual cheerfulness. "So." He took in a deep breath.

"So…" He echoed, trying to sound confident and at ease with his presence. "You look thin. Still no time to fix the microwave?"

"You've regenerated."

"Obviously." He answered, folding his hands behind his back.

"I am sorry." The Doctor uttered. The Master noticed the sadness that lingered in his eyes and wished that he would not look at him like that. He didn't know what to do with his compassion.

"Oh please, don't pull a face like someone died." He finally said, in an effort to make the Doctor stop feeling sorry for him. "It's not that bad. I'm actually enjoying this. Hell I am enjoying this a lot." He laughed lightheartedly. "I was so fed up with the old me that I practically did a little celebratory dance when I woke up in this body. There was so much guilt in that man." He paused, remembering all the misery and despair. "So much grief…I can't understand how I could have ever lived with such a heavy burden on my shoulders without being completely destroyed by it."

"It's what made you human." The Doctor was still studying him, taking in this new Master, trying to figure out what made him tick.

"You know very well that you and I are not. We should not be troubled by it."

"I see." The Doctor muttered, slowly realizing that he had become much worse than he had feared. "And now you're what? You believe that you've become immune to it all? You don't feel any remorse?"

"To be frank I don't feel anything." The Master replied, grinning. "Isn't that great? It took me two days to realize that this man, this shining new man that I have become does not do emotions. My mind is completely sound, making rational decisions based on facts and clever deductions, not on whatever emotional turmoil that happens to rule the more primitive regions of my brain. It's an absolute improvement." He proclaimed. "A liberation of the soul."

"Oh I am sorry." The Doctor said quietly.

The Master grimaced and looked away, not willing to be part of the Doctor's sorrow. "You're starting to sound like a broken record." He complained, then continued on a lighter note. "Did you notice I am taller now? I used to look up to you, literally, now I can see the top of your head." He stood on the tip of his toes and looked down on the Doctor. "You have no idea how strange this is. Oh, and I think I've spotted a bald spot. Right there." He pointed out.

"What are you doing here?" The Doctor asked, ignoring the foolish charade.

"I can pose the same question to you. So I assume the white point star is still working? You're still hot on Rassilon's trail, continuing your life-long act as the justice crusader?"

"And you are still out on revenge?"

"Oh absolutely." The Master grinned, showing a hint of his mad old self.

"I thought you said you've turned into a rational man." The Doctor criticized him.

"A rational mind for an irrational problem. It's not a contradiction."

"Your thirst for retribution has nearly killed you last time. Have you not learned anything?"

"I was nearly a God!" The Master hissed in his face. "If it wasn't for that snot-nosed brat I would have succeeded. Still, I kept a little souvenir." He looked down, closing and opening his hand. The motion gathered a field of red energy that illuminated his face with a hellish glow.

Shocked, the Doctor backed away from him as if the Master had just pulled out a gun. "You've got Omega's powers." The Doctor stammered.

"Only a part of it." The Master mused and watched how the raw energy slithers and crackles between his fingers. "The rest was lost when I was stabbed in the back during transition. It still serves its purpose though. You should see what I can do with this Doctor. It makes you wonder how incredibly powerful Omega was. Compared to him, Rassilon was absolutely nothing, an useless worm to be squashed under his feet."

"What's happening? What are you doing?" The Doctor yelled, alarmed by the shifts in reality that he sensed around him. The red glow intensified, burning brighter and brighter, till it swallowed them both in a white blaze of blinding light.

He could no longer see the Master. He wasn't even sure that he was still there. Then there was a hollow boom, followed by a crimson flash. The ground underneath his feet shuddered. Gravity was momentarily lost and the Doctor fell.

Then for a short moment, only unconsciousness.

When he regained his senses there was soft ground underneath him. Hesitantly, the Doctor scrambled back up.

"What did you do to me?"

As he looked around, he realized that he was no longer on earth. Red blades of soft grass slipped between his fingers and above him, the sky was the color of burnt crimson with beds of pink clouds drifting by.

"What do you think?" The Master was beside him. They were standing op top of a little hill overlooking a valley covered with woodlands of silver birches and purple oaks. A pleasant breeze caressed the flowers and grass at their feet, turning it into a swaying sea of mesmerizing colors. "Don't tell me that you're not impressed." He commented, not without a sense of pride.

The sight of the familiar landscape stretched out before the Doctor stabbed his hearts with a sense of deep melancholic lost. "Is…Is this Gallifrey?"

"New Gallifrey, to be more exact." The Master corrected him. He smiled mischievously. "I brought you here to show you what I can do. For us. For our people."

"What…you've made this? All of it?" The Doctor asked, truly astonished.

"Bare in mind it's not perfect yet, but it's not bad for a couple days of work." He beamed another smile at him, and for a moment, all the enmity that had existed between them just evaporated. The Master had truly wanted the Doctor to enjoy this. In fact, to him, there was no point in recreating this if the Doctor never got to see it. He took in a lungful of air and breathed out deeply. "Oh that smell!" He roared. "That wonderful, beautiful smell! A field full of Elk flowers in the first month of summer, I used to love that so much." He plucked a leaf and inhaled the scent. "Not quite right though…needs a touch of sweetness, and the sky-" He looked up and studied it, furrowing his brows. "I don't know…seems like the hue is not entirely right. A red sky is fine if you do it correctly, but it's so easy to make everything so dark and depressing. Maybe a touch of yellow…what do you think?"

"You've remade Gallifrey?" The Doctor blurted, still stunned by the idea.

The Master looked at him with a big roguish grin. "Oh don't look so surprised, you knew that Omega was the creator of the Timelords. If I have inherited some of his capabilities then of course I can do the same. Now, what do you want me to create next?" He popped the joints in his fingers with the anticipation of a child eager to show his best friend his new toys. "I don't want to start on the animals too soon." He mused out-loud. "Not before the plants have fully rooted. You don't want the herbivores eating themselves into a famine straight away. It's a delicate business, setting up an ecosystem."

"You didn't inherit Omega's powers. You stole it." The Doctor said accusingly. Suddenly he realized that the ground felt strange and soggy. Lifting up his shoes he noticed that the grass blades were bleeding red sap.

"Ah…" The Master muttered, trying hard to hide his own disappointment. "I've hoped that it wouldn't happen so soon."

The grass shriveled, turned black and died. In the valley below, the bark of the trees turn black as well, and in their crowns, the leafs dropped from the branches with the lightest touch of wind.

"What is wrong with this place?"

"Nothing." The Master answered, but of course he couldn't trick the Doctor. "All right I fess up." He sighed, raising his hands in mock surrender. "It's not that stable. Oops, there goes the good impression that I wanted to give you. Well at least I had you in absolute awe for me for what? A good 10 minutes? Ha!" He slapped his hand flat on his knee and smiled smugly. "Still worth the effort!"

"This place is falling apart. Even the planet's atmosphere is disintegrating." The Doctor criticized worriedly.

"Oh keep your socks on. We're not in any real danger. We can pop back to earth within an instant. I can see to it. It is such a waste though." The Master muttered sadly, as he watched this fake world that represented so much of his beloved childhood vanish before his eyes.

The planet was stripped of the Master's creations, and turned from an Eden-like paradise to a lifeless wasteland. The Doctor found himself baking in the heat of the twin suns that scorched the red rock under his feet. Except for the two unforgiving stars, there was only black empty space above their heads.

"Master, listen to me carefully." The Doctor told him, realizing that this was his last chance to divert him from this catastrophic course. "I've met Omega, I've once fought against him to stop his return from the void. If that power you yield is obtained from his essence than you really shouldn't want it. It's like the drums Rassilon had implanted in your mind! It will corrupt you heart and it will destroy your soul!" The Doctor warned.

"Don't be ridiculous! I am in absolute control! If the transition would have been complete I would have already avenged myself by now!" The Master vented, sounding regretful. "I would have plucked Rassilon out of the time stream, giving him flesh and bone for me to torture. I would have given him a million regenerations just to grant me the satisfaction to kill him over and over again. Now I have to wait, and let history take it's course, but wait I shall, knowing that it makes the actual moment of retribution taste even more sweetly." He glared at the Doctor with eyes filled with steel resolve and rage. "When I find Rassilon, I I will take from him whatever life force he has left, and then I shall finish what I have started. I _shall_ become a true God."

"Listen to yourself." The Doctor snapped, repulsed by his revelation. "You're insane! You've completely lost your mind!"

"Au contraire Doctor. I am more rational than I ever was in any of my previous incarnations. I know that you are afraid, but let me assure you, I bear you no ill will. Not against you, and not against the rest of the universe. All I desire, is some form of justice. Retribution on those who have wronged me so deeply and deserve nothing less than my brutality." There was savageness in his plea that came close to religious conviction. "But my rage shall not be against you...Stand by my side Doctor." He offered his hand to his oldest friend. "Together Rassilon won't stand a chance."

The Doctor shook his head, horrified to hear these disturbing echoes of Omega's will in his words. "And you, with your great rational mind is going to decide over who is just, and who is wicked?"

"Think about it Doctor. Think of what we can do!" He tried with an almost deranged sort of excitement. "Together our capacities are unlimited! You think that we've achieved so much in the past, think again. With my transformation complete, we could raise Gallifrey out of the ashes. We could bring the Timelords back, and usher our people, our civilization into a golden age of peace and prosperity. We could rewrite Timelord history, rid it of all wrongs, and exterminate all of our mortal enemies." He paused when he finally noticed the horrified look on the Doctor's face. "Well…isn't that what you want?" The Master tried, puzzled by his firm rejection. "Isn't that what we have both fought for?"

"I'm sorry…" The Doctor whispered. He was speaking to the man who was no longer there. The friend he now finally realized, had truly lost. "I thought I could still save you, but I was so wrong." He gazed up at the Master who had replaced his beloved companion.

"Who are you?" He asked him, embittered and shaking his head in grievous anger. "What kind of monster have you turned into? How can you believe in something so atrocious, that you alone have the right to decide who will live and who will die? You madman, no one has that right!" He told him, furious.

The Master did not seem be the least affected by the Doctor's tirade. "So I assume you reject my offer? You won't help me?"

"Help you? If anything, I am more convinced then ever that you should be stopped and locked away in a box somewhere at the end of the universe. At least then you won't be able to harm anyone!"

"Doctor, you better understand this clearly. If you're not with me, than you're against me." He stepped up to him with a deadly look in his piercing blue eyes. "Are you're sure that you really want to be an enemy of a God?"

"You're not a God yet." The Doctor told him, standing his ground.

"No…not yet." The Master blinked and gazed away. "So, that means it's back to the old ways then." He gave him a polite grin, then turned his back on the Doctor and started to walk away with his hands folded on his back. He didn't want him to sense his disillusionment. "Remember what we used to do Doctor?" he shouted back at him. "Before you came to free me from my prison? We used to play such _exciting_ games."

The Doctor watched him go with weeping hearts, but otherwise remained silent.

"I bet you still know the rules."

The Master was now but a shape in the far distance, dissolving with the darkness like a shadow. Only his voice remained with the Doctor, echoing in the empty void that had been their shared vision of their lost home.

"Last one of us who stays alive wins."

Left alone, the emptiness surrounding the Doctor began to turn back into substance. The sights, sounds and smells of a warm city night slowly returned to his senses, till he once again found himself standing on the cable bridge, his long coat sweeping in the wind.

There was no sign of the Master except for an eerie echo of his last words that rang like an endless warning in the Doctor's mind.

_**TBC, meanwhile please review and comment.**_


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**1.**

For the first time since he had regenerated, the Master experienced a profound sense of loss and loneliness that was so overwhelming that it cut into his hearts like two daggers of ice. The awareness that the Doctor's words could still affect him so deeply also puzzled and infuriated him, for he regarded any feelings he might have for the Doctor to be a relic of the old Master. This was not him. These foolish sentiments belonged to the man with an obvious flaw.

The man who cared about the Doctor.

The man who was supposed to be dead.

"Why?" He questioned himself as he stalked the dark empty streets. "Why the hell did I let him get away?"

He shouldn't have. He had run through every possible scenario, considered what would happen to his carefully constructed plans and painstaking efforts if the Doctor would intervene. Based on their previous conflicts, and calculating and extrapolating on the Doctor's earlier behavior, character and intellect, he would have to at least expect him to greatly compromise his affaires, if not completely ruin plans.

"There is no logic in this!" He screamed, frustration getting a hold on his temper. "He refused to accept truce. It's more than obvious that he will now become a nuisance. I should have eradicated him. There is no other rational conclusion possible."

When he finally broke this compulsive chain of thoughts, he found himself to have wandered into an unknown part of town, miles away from Cathy's flat. Behind a fenced off alleyway, a dog was barking at him, and at the other end of the street a yellow garbage truck turned the corner. The Master looked up over the roofs. A pink hue was glowing at the horizon. Dawn was breaking. Unnoted, he had been out all night after his encounter with the Doctor.

Tired of walking he got on a city bus. As the vehicle pulled up and drove away back to the city center, his mind continued to turn.

_The Doctor had chosen to become my enemy._

_I should have killed him._

_I should remove the Doctor out of the equation before he becomes my Achilles heel._

"Excuse me sir."

Distracted, he glanced up. The bus had already past a couple of stations, and had picked up a large number of passengers. Almost all of the seats were now occupied except for the window seat next to him.

"Would you mind if I sit there?" The woman asked politely. Somewhere in her mid-twenties, she had short blond hair and was attractive in a plain sort of way. The bump she tried to hide under a lose summer dress revealed that she was going to become a young mother soon. The Master didn't respond. The problem with talking to these humans nowadays was that it took him longer to figure out what was thought and what was actually said than ever before. He had always been psychic, but reading people's minds used to be such hard work. Now, it came to him as easy as eavesdropping into a loud conversation, and he actually had to try to block out most of these background thoughts when he was in company of others or the noise would drive him completely mental.

"Hey grandpa, she's talking to you!" A cocky young man sitting in the next row barked at him.

"Don't mind him gorgeous." The young man told the girl, giving her a wink. "He's probably a bit soft in the noggins. He's been talking to himself ever since he got on the bus. Hey!" He gave the Master a mean shove. "Didn't you hear me? She wants to sit down. Move out of her way weirdo!"

His mate sitting next to him thought that this was hilarious, and hollered with laughter. "Freak!" He called the Master, and threw an empty soda can at him, which he dodged easily without even caring to turn around to look.

Deeply embarrassed by the two men's behavior, the girl glanced at the other passengers for help, but they all turned a blind eye on the unpleasantries.

"Please, let me sit down or they will never shut up." She begged him. The Master finally responded and folded his long legs to let her pass. If he was angered by the thugs' insolence, his face didn't show it.

"Thanks." The girl exhaled a soft sigh of relief.

"Of course." The Master muttered as she took the seat next to him, seemingly ignoring her and everyone else on the bus. "It's not like I am weak."

"I don't think you are." She hesitantly replied, not sure that he was actually talking to her.

"I am not that man anymore. I do things differently."

"Look, if it's still about those idiots, just ignore them." She told him, being kind.

He turned to her and looked right through her as if she was just air.

"Let's do an experiment." He spoke with a strange resolution, and deliberately tapped the cocky youngster on the shoulder to catch his attention.

"No." The girl muttered, fearing trouble, but the Master calmly raised his hand as the young thug spun around. A red blast him in the face and he tumbled down into the aisle like a sack of heavy potatoes. There was a large smoking hole where his mouth and nose used to be.

For a moment, the Master contemplated what consequence this act of violence might have on him. He studied the vacant stare on the blackened face and recalled his victim's final expression of shock and horror…and then realized, not without relief, that it didn't even stir up an echo of guilt inside him.

A frantic choir of mad screams erupted as passengers dashed and climbed out of their seats to scramble over each other in the narrow lane to get away from the Master. The panicking bus driver hit the brakes hard and everyone lurched or fell forward. He tried to open the mechanic doors to let everybody out, but the Master simply blocked the electronical signal, trapping the horrified passengers inside.

"Nothing." He slowly rose from his seat, the dark conductor of this symphony of chaos and death. "Just like I told him, I feel absolutely nothing!" He proclaimed to the world, and a cold monstrous grin appeared on his face.

He was not done with these humans yet.

"No, please don't! Please! I am sorry. I am sorry!" The remaining thug crawled away as the Master approached him with his hand raised, raw energy crackling between his fingers. His frantic tears had no effect on him. After the charcoaled body hit the ground, the Master turned on the rest of the passengers.

Excluding himself, there were 24 people on the bus that morning. He massacred 23 of them in cold blood. Young office workers, teens on their way to school, an elderly couple, it didn't matter who they were, or how they pleaded…And with every single one he murdered, he felt absolutely nothing.

Finally, he was left with only the pregnant girl.

"Please, don't!" She crawled away under her seat and cradled her belly as if she was instinctively shielding the unborn infant inside. "Don't kill me!" She wept, desperate tears rolling down her face. "Please!"

The morbid red glow in the Master's hand dimmed slightly.

The girl's words should not affect him. They were not any different than those uttered by his other victims. She was not more distressed, or frightened. It didn't matter to him that she was a woman or that she was young, or even that she was with child, still…

He couldn't do it.

_He just couldn't kill her._

"You are a problem to me." He crouched down beside her and looked at her face. For the first time since she had talked to him on the bus, she actually had the idea that he really saw her. Considering the horrible circumstances, it was hard to figure out whether this was a good or bad thing for her chance of survival.

"Why are you a problem?" He mumbled, obsessively staring her in the eyes.

"I…I don't." She stuttered, too traumatized to say anything coherently.

"It seems that I cannot kill you." He told her in a calm, matter of fact voice. "Why is that? What makes you so different from the others?" He furrowed and continued to study her, convinced that if he could find out why, he would be able to find a way to deal with the Doctor.

"Please…I am 4 months pregnant." She hiccupped. "I've done nothing to you..."

"Oh but that is not entirely true, is it? You were kind to me. I mean proper kind. When those bullies started causing a scene you really felt sorry for me. I even heard you think that you would rather have not asked for that seat if you knew that it would put me in so much trouble."

"I am sorry." She wept. "Please I am sorry for everything."

"You don't have to be. You've done nothing wrong. And I feel sympathy for you." He contemplated this for a moment. "That is strange, don't you think? We barely know each other. Your life means absolutely nothing to me. I should be able to end it as easily as putting out the tiny life-light in a fly…And yet…I don't want to harm you, because…I actually feel grateful that you cared."

"Then don't…please let me go!" The girl continued to beg, unable to follow much of his mad logic in her shocked state.

"Is that what's happening with me and the Doctor?" The Master asked himself by vocalizing the question to the girl. "I can't kill him even now I know that I am gaining a dangerous enemy, because I still care?" He snorted disapprovingly, and then grimaced, disgusted with the conclusion. "It can't be that." He muttered, rising back up and pacing up and down in front of the terrified woman. "You don't understand! This is absolutely not who I am. Caring is a disadvantage, a weakness. I am no longer weak and flawed. I've evolved beyond feelings, beyond compassion."

He raised his hand, confident that now he had cracked it, he would be able to regain control.

"I am sorry, but your life means nothing to me." He told the girl, but in his mind, he was speaking to the Doctor.

"Please…Please..." She wept, mad now with fear. "Please don't."

For a moment it looked like he had made up his mind. He will kill her, just to make a point to himself. But then the doubt crept in, weakening his will, crumbling his resolve.

"Get out." He just said, turning away from her. Even in her traumatized state, the girl did not need to be told twice. After he watched her dash out of the bus and out into the street, he aimed his focus at the CCTV cameras in the vehicle. With his mind, he wiped any evidence of his crimes from digital memory. Like the murder of professor Duinkerk, the man responsible for this bloody massacre shall never be found. When the first police sirens finally burst into the neighborhood, the Master had long since disappeared.

**2.**

Donna was startled by the sound of the Tardis doors closing. "Where have you been all night?" She fumed, going straight after the Doctor. "One minute you're going on and on about Timelord DNA. Next thing I know, you run out like you got your pants on fire without telling me where you go or when you will show up again. I am not here to babysit your Tardis you know."

"Of course not. Don't be silly. There is no need. No one can get in without a key." The Doctor rambled on like usual, but the grave expression on his face stopped her being harsh on him.

"What's going on?" Donna asked, fearing the worst.

"I've met the Master."

"The Master?" Of course she had expected him to show up, but now that the Doctor had finally found him, she could not help herself from feeling badly prepared for this. "How is he? Is he all right?"

The Doctor shook his head. A great sorrow lingered in his eyes. The encounter with the Master had left him worn and disheartened.

"He has regenerated and has gone completely insane. He believes he can turn himself into a Timelord god if he finds Rassilon and steals his essence." It only occurred to him now how angry and embittered he was about this. "He has gained some of Omega's powers, he can now bend space and possibly even time. He just popped me on a fake planet and back again without so much as breaking out in a sweat."

"So…he's dangerous." Donna muttered.

The Doctor slammed his hand on the console. "We need to stop him, and we need to stop Grant. We have to keep both of them away from each other as far as possible!"

"I can't believe we're fighting the Master now. Didn't he say anything? Didn't he listen to you?"

"I talked, but he didn't care. Not anymore." He paused, recalling the encounter. "There was like this massive wall inside his head. I tried to get through to him. I tried to dig so deep. Didn't know what I wanted to find…some traces of the old Master…Nothing. My old friend is gone." He said, heartbroken.

"What are we going to do?"

The Doctor sucked in a deep breath of air and wiped his hand over his face. "Time is running out. He's playing a game with us, knowing him I am sure he won't play fair." He removed a grid from the platform in the control room and climbed down in the narrow space below.

"A game? What sort of game?" Donna asked worriedly, peering down the hole.

"A deadly one. He's obsessed with revenge and has been planning this for quite some time so our side certainly does not have the lead in this. We have to find out more about what he's up to." He switched on the sonic and swept the blue light over the hidden corners.

"What are you looking for down there?"

"Pigeons." The Doctor said, as if that would explain everything. "Aha! Here they are!" He pulled out a metallic cage from underneath a pile of strange nick-nacks, causing the whole instable structure to collapse. "Cyber-mechanical birds!" He cheered, coughing his lungs out as the cloud of dust settled on him like a grey snowstorm. "Got them for an apple and an egg at a carboot sale on the planet Nara. I love carboot sales, used to buy loads of stuff there. Never thought that any of it would actually come in handy." He handed the cage over to Donna as he climbed out of the hole.

"What do we do with these rust-buckets then?" Donna asked, examining the three corroded robots rattling inside the cage. "Do they even work?"

"Of course they work." The Doctor rambled on. "At this moment, we need every bit of information that we can lay our hands on. Remember how the cold war was won?"

"What are you talking about? The cold war wasn't won by anyone. They just tore down the Berlin wall and everyone had a big party."

"Is that what they teach you at school nowadays?" The Doctor complained as he took one of the metal birds out of the cage and turned it on its back. Tucked away under a rusty wing was a clock key. "Information warfare. That's my kind of battle. No guns, no bullets, and generally as harmless as a game of snakes and ladders." He kept winding the key as he rushed over to the Tardis door, grabbing a forgotten leather jacket from the clothes stand as he flounced past.

"Hang on, I know what you're up to. You're going to spy on the Master." Donna uttered, finally getting where this was heading. "Sounds like a bonkers idea. Do you even know where he is?"

"Nope...but the birds can figure it out." As soon as he stopped turning the key, the mechanical creature opened its eyes and came to life. It shook the rust from its back, revealing a shiny silvery coat of feathers underneath. "Hello there." The Doctor greeted him. "Sorry to wake you up, but I need your help." He folded the jacket under its beak. The bird immediately started to pluck at it.

"Oh my God, you got sniffer pigeons." Donna commented. "Now I really have seen everything."

"The Master's old coat. She's picking out traces of his DNA." The Doctor explained. "It's like a bio-molecular footprint. She will use this to track him down. Here, give me a hand with the others." He handed the other two over to Donna while he opened the Tardis doors and stepped outside with his spybot.

"Find him." He whispered into the mechanical creature's sensors before he released it. He watched it flap her silver wings in the sun and followed its ascend till the bot had disappeared out of sight.

"There is something else I want you to take a look at." Donna told the Doctor after they had released the two other birds. She turned to a computer screen and scrolled down a page till she found the news item that she wanted to show him.

"I did a bit of old-fashioned detective work while you were away. The Tardis archive came in real handy." She noticed the look the Doctor was giving her. "What? I got bored and you left all this switched on. Anyway, I figured that if Rassilon is messing with time, then obviously there will be stuff happening around here that doesn't seem normal. So I started scanning the news of the last couple of weeks, looking for any weird stuff, and I found this." She pointed out a short article from only a couple of days before. The headline read: Brutal murder of medical biology professor shocks Erasmus university staff.

"Everything was caught on CCTV camera, but the odd thing was that they could not identify who had done it." She commented, while the Doctor read through it rapidly. "The police commented that they believed that someone had tinkered with the footage, but couldn't prove anything." She waited for the Doctor to reply.

"What do you think, a tad suspicious or what?"

"I think you're a bit magnificent, that's what I think!" The Doctor told her with a radiant, admiring smile. "This is absolutely brilliant Donna!"

"Oh stop it!" Donna uttered. "You're gonna make me blush."

"This could be linked to Felix Grant or the Master." The Doctor rambled, his mind speeding into working mode. "This has happened within the same institute where Grant is working. Doesn't necessary mean anything, could be a coincidence, but then again it could also be a lead!"

"What do we do now? Should we go find out more about this murder? Or do we follow Grant?"

"Both, plus we're going after the Master when the birds return." The Doctor replied, and gave her another one of his catchy smiles. "Multi-tasking Donna, hope you're any good at it, because I am absolutely horrible!"

**3.**

The apartment was shrouded in darkness when Cathy returned from visiting Grace late in the evening. When she left earlier that morning, the Master had not been there, so she had not expected him to be home. She got the most awful fright when she switched the lights on in the kitchen and found him sitting on his usual spot at the table behind the microscope. He wasn't working or anything, just gazing in the distance with his hands folded under his chin. Even now with the lights on he hardly noticed that she was there.

"Jesus! What are you doing sitting there in the dark on your own?"

"Thinking." He didn't look at her, just kept staring ahead. "I need to think."

"Where were you last night? I thought something horrible had happened to you."

"I met an old acquaintance. We talked. It took much longer and it was far less enjoyable than I had anticipated." There was tendency to sulk as he explained this to her.

Cathy studied his face. "Are you all right?"

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well…nothing." She gave up and turned away to take a cold coke out of the fridge. "I left you dinner last night." She noticed the plate of food covered in foil on the top shelf. "You didn't even touch it."

"I found your little note telling me how to heat it up in the microwave."

"Yes, and?"

"I can't cook with the microwave." The Master grudgingly admitted. "I didn't want to blow up the flat while you were away, so I decided to leave it."

"You're kidding me, right?" Cathy took the plate out and closed the fridge door. "So instead of popping this in, and pushing a few buttons you rather not eat anything at all?"

"That's correct." He watched her taking the cold plate over to the other side of the kitchen. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like? I am heating it up for you so you don't have to starve." She slammed the microwave shut and switched it on. Then she turned to him and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest.

The Master just stared at her with a look of bafflement while his dinner wheeled around inside the kitchen appliance.

Finally he said; "Why do you care?"

"Have you seen yourself in the mirror? You look like a stick-insect in a suit."

"No, that's not what I mean…" Blinking his eyes, not understanding why she was so thick sometimes. "Why do _people_ care?"

"What?" Cathy replied, not sure where this was going. "You mean in general? About other people?"

"Yes."

"You're asking me?" She snorted.

"Yes." He sighed.

"Well…because it's what people do." She replied, making a real effort now to explain after realizing that he was actually serious about this. "It's human to care. We love, we feel the joy and sadness and pain of others, and we are touched by it. If we didn't, we're just no better than beasts. It will make a horrible world."

"But there is no benefit in it! It complicates decisions and cripples the mind." The Master replied sternly, throwing back arguments at her and so very convinced that she must be wrong.

"Oh come on, you can't mean that. Even you, whatever the hell you are, should know how important it is to connect with other human beings."

"No." He stubbornly shook his head. "I don't see the reason why I should. Take you for example. You feel guilty about what happened to your parents, blaming yourself for their deaths, and thus you will not rest till you have found some kind of miracle cure that will enable to you to bring your sister back. How far has that led you? Now let's see, let's analyse this shall we? You're 33 years old. You have a dead-end job that you absolutely loathe. You're on your own, but you're not even trying to find anyone because you think you don't have the time to do anything else besides your research. So you're lonely and deeply unhappy with your life, but despite all of your hard work and sacrifices, before I you met me, you were as close to saving your sister as the Earth's sun is distant from the nearest star. So basically, you have wasted everything, you have thrown away your life, just because you motives were driven by sentiment. Now tell me, where exactly was the benefit for you in all of that?!" He paused his cerebral vomiting for a moment when he realized what it had done to his companion. "You're upset?" He concluded, reading her face and becoming somewhat puzzled.

"I have not wasted my life." Cathy mumbled, close to tears. "You said so yourself, you needed my findings."

He furrowed his brows. "Why are you upset?"

"You said that without it you won't even be able to help Anne!"

"I didn't say that your contributions were useless. Look I was just pointing out that you have drawn the shortest straw in life because you have allowed yourself to give in to your feelings." The Master rambled, infuriated that he was facing yet another teary-eyed woman who was shaking his resolve. "Even you have to admit that it is better to not be bothered with anyone than to allow your life to be dictated by something so futile, am I not right?!" He asked her sternly. He desperately wanted to be right.

Cathy glared up at him. "You know what?" She whispered. "I feel sorry for you. Because if you really don't understand this, you must the most loneliest man in the world."

The alarm of the microwave went off, and Cathy went over to take the food out. She put the plate in front of him, turned away and was about to leave.

"Wait." The Master said quite unexpectedly. "Sorry. I was upset. There was no reason for me to take it out on you." There was a honesty in his voice that she had not heard before.

"Care to talk about it?" She asked, realizing how hard it must be for someone like him to apologize.

"I doubt you would understand."

"Of course not." She muttered with a small smile. "Silly little me." She put her coat back on. "The fridge is still very much empty. I am going out to the shops." She stopped before she went out of the kitchen. "You're wrong you know."

The Master looked up at her, lifting his eyebrows.

"I've seen you with my sister. You didn't come into my life because you wanted to help me. You do the things you do, because for some reason, you care about Anne."

She expected him to contradict her with some witty reply, but the Master remained silent, stunned that she had made such an insightful observation.

"So maybe you don't realize it, but you and I are not so different after all. You've also drawn the shortest straw. Maybe you're more human than you want yourself to believe." She broke her gaze. "I will be back in an hour."

Cathy left the apartment. Alone, the Master stared ahead of himself, lost and bewildered by her statement.

He suddenly turned his head to the window. There was a warning from his Tardis. "What is it my old girl?" He muttered, communicating with her through the mind-link. "What did you find?"

Two blocks away, in the middle of a busy two-lane road that was jammed packed with traffic, stood the Master's Tardis. She had not completely lost the reptilian form that she had obtained on Saltsea, and was disguised as a statue of a great scaly dragon, black as night, her paws resting on a square granite base. Although she blended poorly with the surrounding modern high-rises, no one had noticed her so far, or rather, the Tardis had not attracted anyone's attention, courtesy to the distraction filter that the Master had set up in order to hide her presence from the Doctor. But now the stone dragon was awakened, with her almond-shaped eyes glowing like brimstone. It had picked up the presence of something alien, circling the sky high above the city. Something that carried the Doctor's genetic signature.

"Did he now." The Master mumbled with a devious smile after he had quickly analyzed the information that the Tardis had given him. "That horrible old cheat. Well, maybe you should get rid of these pests before they fly back to tell on us."

The dragon's eyes shone brightly as if to acknowledge the Master's command. Stone paws began to move, lifting themselves from the rock as the large bat-like wings unfolded, scaring a flock of pigeons that had been sleeping on his back into taking flight. She then pulled herself free from the granite base and followed them, taking to the sky with smoke curling out of her nostrils.

Gliding above the city like a great bird of prey, the black dragon immediately tracked down one of the Doctor's mechanical spies. She dived down and pounced into the robot bird, tearing off a silver wing with her great sharp talons. As the spybird's flight tumbled out of control, she sucked in a deep breath into her heated lungs and breathed out a bolt of fire that incinerated the Doctor's spybot, leaving nothing but ashes to rain down over the city below. The second spybot was quickly spotted as well, and was relentlessly hunted till it was driven into a conjunction of three office blocks. There it was snatched in mid air and devoured, the tiny body crushed between the dragon's powerful jaws. Still huffing metal feathers out of her nostrils, she found the last spybot, perched on the ledge of a building's 20th floor, hiding between real pigeons. As soon as it was spotted the little robot bird took to the sky. The dragon struck it down with her tail, sending the poor spybot crashing down like a hit tennis ball. It plummeted into a busy high street with speeding traffic, and rolled over the asphalt, losing bits and pieces till it came to a hold in the middle of the road where it was immediately ran over by a car. The head separated from the squashed torso and rolled into the nearby gutter. Hovering above the scene, the dragon reported the results of the hunt back to the Master. After sensing his approval, she swooped around and headed back to her base in the east of the city.

It was not long after the dragon was gone that a woman in high heel boots picked op the loose head of the ruined spybot from the side of the road. She studied the springs and wires inside, and took out something from her purse that looked very similar to the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, only a bit smaller of size. "Hang in there little fellow." She said. "Don't die on me yet." She whirred the sonic over the exposed mad coil of wiring, creating sparks inside the tiny bird head. A pair of mechanic eyes opened, blue lights gleaming as the system went back online.

River Song smiled, and pulled the microphone of her headset closer.

"Professor Song to all units. I have found him. I repeat. I have found the Doctor." She paused as her smile became one of anticipation. "Guess what, he left us a little guide."

_**TBC, meanwhile please review and comment.**_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

**Previously:**

_Gallifrey, the final day of the Timewar._

It shouldn't be long now.

Oh please, don't let it take any longer.

As a punishment for aiding the Doctor in putting an end to his destructive plans, Rassilon had locked the Master in a cage in the top of the tower. A great fire was lit underneath, heating the iron grid platform till it was scorching hot. He couldn't get away from the heat. They had chained him down like a dog, and where ever he came in contact with the hellish metal, blisters ballooned up. Horrific burns covered every bare spot on his knees, his feet, his legs, his arms and hands. Writhing in pain, he kept rolling from one side of the cage to the other like a demented lab rat to keep from setting himself ablaze.

The agony he was going through was unbearable, maddening.

The sickening smell of his own burning flesh filled his nostrils.

He caught Rassilon in his peripheral vision, overseeing his sadistic punishment through the iron bars that were scalded black. His expression remained cold and merciless. Lips unmoving, he could still hear Rassilon's thoughts loud and clear.

_Justice, Lord Master._

His grey, unblinking eyes burned in the shadows. It was that last image of the Rassilon, his brutal creator, which would remain locked inside the Master's mind forever.

_JUSTICE._

With the Master's vision severely compromised by the intense heat, the hated Timelord drifted out of focus as if he was swallowed by the dark.

Left alone, the torment continued.

He screamed till his vocal-cords were ripped to shreds. He should have died from his horrific injuries, but his flesh kept healing itself. It was Rassilon's immortality turned into a curse, the most vicious, beastly kind of torture. He wished that the Doctor would just do what he was supposed to do and end it. Blast Gallifrey from the sky, and turn his tormented body into atoms to be dispatched over the cold void of space. He didn't care what he would become, as long as that awful burning, that searing, scalding agony would cease.

He was unsure how long he had suffered, but at the end there was a voice, a woman's voice, wise and kind, that called to him.

Vision blurred and with his senses dazed by the pain, he could see no more than a figure dressed in red. Five other figures were standing at the back. Then the cage moved.

He was removed from the fire.

Someone cut lose his chains, then opened the door and dragged him out. He collapsed on the floor, the touch of the damp stones was like merciful rain on his scorched and blistered skin, and calmed down the agony of his horrific wounds.

"Lord Master."

The voice struck him with familiarity. Drifting back into consciousness, his fluttering eyes revealed the blurry vision of an elderly Timelady. To the Master, who had suffered so much, she had the face of the most gracious of angels.

He opened and closed his mouth in an effort to speak, but his cracked lips split painfully, and his voice was hoarse, inaudible.

The woman kneeled by his side. Her grey-green eyes looked down at him, kind and compassionate. He moaned softly when she touched his forehead. "It's all right." She whispered, and listened to his mind.

He had only one thought. One hateful, crimson-red name that flashed through his mind.

_RASSILON_

She gazed at him. "The Lord president has sealed himself inside his mausoleum, awaiting his doom. The rest of the Lord counsels are no more. Frightened of what is to come, most of them have taken their own lives. The citadel is abandoned, except for a few of us."

He blinked his eyes. The surroundings were slowly falling back into focus, and he noticed the small group of Timelords standing in the back. Their faces hidden in the shadow, the adorned bright crimson robes they wore identified them as high counsel members. He gazed back at her. There was something about his gracious angel. He thought he knew her. He knew her from long ago.

"I'm sorry we've let this happen to you, but we were powerless, until now. "

Although overcome by the pain, he forced himself to concentrate to communicate with her.

_He said that I was to share his fate. That I will burn for eternity, and that my mind will be trapped in ashes._ The Master gazed at her with large, frightened eyes.

"Gallifrey has a cruel master. Rassilon has locked you away in this tower, because he wants you to burn and suffer. His last vindictive act of revenge towards the man who he believed had robbed him of everything."

The woman gently stroked the Master's hair, comforting him as she sensed the dread in his hearts.

"I know what you think. I know how frightened you are. But you must not despair. This shall be our ending, not yours. Rassilon was wrong about you. You're not just his victim, nor his pawn in his perverted game of trying to regain control over his doomed fate. My lord Master, your destiny does not lie in the four beats of maddening drums, nor in the glowing heart of a shattered white point star."

Gently, she took his burnt hand and held it. Images flashed through the Master's mind, fragile but strong like the flapping wings of a butterfly caught in a storm. He saw a lonely prisoner, locked away in a dark tower that was buried in a sea of diamonds, followed by a black planet with a crimson sky, disappearing into a black hole. He saw the old man who was with the Doctor in Naismith mansion, and a woman with flaming red hair and an attitude to match, an army of Judoon soldiers, a man dressed in a grey suit with cobalt eyes that looked right into your soul. A Roman feast with three sisters, bickering with each other as they stirred in a huge cauldron filled with human bones, a woman with bright green eyes, handing him a scythe, its curved blade so thin that it was almost translucent. And through all of this, he was running.

He was running with the Doctor.

Her hand pulled away, and the glimpses into his future stopped. He gazed back at her, bewildered by the revelation.

She smiled at him. "You see lord Master. There is good reason to keep faith. Your story does not end here. The good Doctor, he won't allow it."

She glanced back at the others. "It is foretold that we will die today, but we will not die as cowards, and perish in shame like our Lord president or the high Lords of the counsel. Enough suffering had been caused by Rassilon's arrogance and selfishness."

She rose up slowly. "We cannot set you free." She said ruefully. "Nor can we stop the Doctor from ending the Timewar with the annihilation of our race. But we can still save you, lord Master. We can transform Rassilon's prison into an a sanctuary that would protect you from the destruction of our world."

She turned to the other remaining high counsel members. "The crystals are placed, and the Ark is singing its final song." She raised her staff in the air, and the others followed swiftly.

"On this last day of the Timewar, this relentless war that had been filled with madness and greed, in which we have done so much wrong to so many, let our final act be one of redemption. Let our deaths be a sacrifice that saves rather than destroys."

She looked down at the Master with a resolved look in her eyes. The white point star at the tip of her staff started to glow a golden light.

"We will give our life force to raise the Ark and seal you within, so that you might live."

A bright white light erupted, bathing her and her companions in swirling clouds of golden stardust. Six lonely figures, standing tall with their crimson robes flapping in the air, proud and dignified, like the Timelords of old. Faint blue streams of plasma beams poured from their chests, and joined the unnatural golden cloud, which grew bigger and stronger till it swept up into a vortex of pure and furious light. She glanced down at him one last time, eyes shining with sorrow, but still so very determined.

"Farewell my lord Master, remember us few. Don't let our existence and that of the Timelord race been but a futile dream."

_Wait… _He raised himself to catch a glimpse of her. Beneath him, the ground began to shake violently.

_Who are you?_

"I was the Doctor's guarding angel." A sad smile curled the corners of her lips. "And now I shall be yours." A single tear glided down her cheek. "One day, when he finally comes, please tell him…tell him that…" She paused for a moment. The others had disappeared, and only her face, beautiful and serene, was still visible against the sea of white.

_Tell him what?_ He asked, devoted to do something back for her.

She shook head. There were no words that needed to be spoken.

"He will see. He knows."

And then the blinding light swallowed her completely.

**1.**

The Master had set up an operation theatre in the middle of the kitchen. On the kitchen table was a creature covered underneath a bed-sheet with a square hole cut out in the fabric. It gave access to the opening in the cranium that he had drilled in the skull. A colorful bundle of electrodes was placed on the brain surface seemingly at random. Next to him, on a little trolley, was some sort of supercomputer of the most impossible design, consisting of wires connected to a small flatscreen tv that he had taken from Cathy's bedroom. It was hooked up to her laptop, which he had partially dismantled, and replaced with parts of a printer, a cell phone, a vacuum cleaner and a pink hairdryer. Every time the electrodes picked up the signal of firing neurons, the vacuum cleaner turned on, sucking up clean air and blowing up a cloud of dust.

On screen, a map of white dots was displayed in 3D, each representing a single brain cell. There were perhaps as many dots as there were stars in the galaxy, and together they formed the outline of a complete brain structure. Every time he probed inside the skull, the white dots fired and flashed red.

The Master was busy mapping the activity of certain regions of the frontal lobe when something broke his concentration. Sensing a familiar presence in the room, he turned around, and found a woman in white standing behind him.

For a moment he was speechless. He furrowed his brows and pinched his nose-bridge, doubtful if he was awake or dreaming.

"Something wrong lord Master?" His guardian angel spoke.

He gazed with incredulity at the Timelady, the same wise and merciful woman who had conserved his life during the destruction of Gallifrey. The woman who only existed in his sub-consciousness, but was now standing in front of him, dressed in ghostly white. "No…It's just…I've never expected to see you again." He blurted out.

"I am not merely confined to your delusions, although I must admit that I was there, the last time that we've met."

"The last time…" He paused. Memories of that illusional world that he had created on the Infinity flooded back to him. "Yes…yes, I remember, you came to warn me." He replied thoughtfully. "You came to shake me out of my dreams together with little Rachel."

"I am here now to do the same." Her expression became struck by grief. "Why did you betray him?"

A sad smile flickered across the Master's face. "I've never promised you anything, did I?" He turned his back on her in the hope that she would disappear again. "Besides, the decision to save this unredeemable sinner was your own, I've never asked for it." He reminded her almost reproachfully.

"I didn't mean the Doctor. Why did you betray _him_?"

His past regeneration flashed in front of his mind's eye. It was Harold Saxon, the Master who was the Doctor's companion and friend for the last 20 years.

"What are you playing at? I am not betraying myself!" He answered, angered by her accusation. "Can't you understand that I actually want all this? I do want to bring Anne back, and I want nothing more in the world than to take revenge on the man who has destroyed my life. That's my only goal. It has never been anything else!"

"You think you're so different from the man you've left behind at Saltsea." She told him wisely. "You try so hard to make yourself belief that he's dead and buried in Dagon's tomb, but is it really that easy to forget about those innocent people on that bus? When you're alone, can you shut your eyes, and not think about those horrified faces and dying whispers?"

"Shut up!" He snapped, and threw a socket wrench at her. It passed right through her body and knocked a stack of cups from the shelves. "Why are you here?! Why do you torment me?!" He raged.

The Timelady remained a vision of serenity. "The day of reckoning is coming." She warned him. "For you and the Doctor this is the end of the line. You can no longer run away from this. Both of you have to stand up and fight or let all of this world end in the destruction that Rassilon's resurrection shall bring."

"Is that it? You want us to work together?" The Master remarked sarcastically. "I am afraid that you're talking to the wrong Timelord my lady. The Doctor and I are no longer on the same side. Our journey has already ended. We've reverted back to being enemies."

"You couldn't harm the Doctor."

"No…I couldn't." He grudgingly admitted, clutching his head in misery. _Why can't she stop? There was no use in any of this. _"But that doesn't mean that-"

"Remember on which side you're fighting, lord Master." She told him, her face moved by emotions. "Remember the man you want to be."

"I know who I want to be, and it's not-" He blinked his eyes. The woman was gone. Slowly, he leaned forward on the kitchen table, badly shaken by her forbidding message.

**2.**

"Excuse me miss, but do you work here?"

Donna stopped and felt her heart flutter inside her chest, although it was only to be expected that she would eventually be noticed sneaking around the research department. Luckily, on her way to the university, she had prepared herself how to react. Se swiftly swirled around, and gave Rob a wide toothy smile. _Just do what the Doctor always does._ She reminded herself. _Just act confident._

"Because I am pretty sure I've never seen you on this floor before." Rob walked up to her, curious. "Are you from a different department?"

"Oh I am sorry. Couldn't find anyone to introduce myself to. I am agent Noble." She flipped the psychic paper that she had borrowed from the Doctor open for him to see, hoping that it would still work without the Doctor around. "I am here for the murder-case of professor Duinkerk." She added, offering him a hand.

"Oh. Oh right. I am Robert. Robert Finkel." He quickly shook her hand, a bit awe struck that he was actually talking to a real police agent. "Didn't know that it was still going on."

"Well it's not solved yet, is it? We still don't know who the murderer is."

"No you don't? I though the police said they were getting very close?"

"Oh no we absolutely have no clue whatsoever." Donna laughed nervously, realizing a bit too late how bad that actually sounded. "Uhm, that's why they sent me here to take a second look on the crime scene and talk to people. People like you for example! So who's in charge of this place?"

"Well, no one actually." Robert replied, slightly surprised by the question. "You see, professor Duinkerk was sort of running our department, but the big guys up in the academic food-chain have not found anyone suitable to replace him yet. Meanwhile we kinda run the place on our own. Everyone knows what they're doing so it's fine."

"Can you show me?"

"What?" Rob asked, confused.

"The place where he was found."

"Oh you mean the crime-scene?" Rob opted, getting excited that he could use some of the lines of his favorite detective series. "Yes of course. I thought you guys must have collected everything by now. That spot around the service elevator and the vending-machine was closed off for an entire week. I had to go two floors down to get my snacks."

"It always helps to take a second look at things." Donna said, trying to sound convincing.

He showed her the rather dull space between the elevator and the storage room.

"Why are these pipes broken?" Donna asked after observing the damage the Master had done to the walls and plumbing.

"Seriously, you don't know? The murderer broke the liquid nitrogen pipeline and turned professor Duinkerk's head into an icicle before he chopped it off. Didn't you read the police report? It was even on tape. They showed it to me in the police station. It was like a horror scene in one of those Saw-movies."

"Did the professor have any contact with people outside the lab that you know of? Someone suspicious that you care to mention." She almost wanted to describe the Master to him till she realized that it would be useless, because he wouldn't look like that anymore. It's quite confusing, dealing with regenerating Timelords. You never get that problem with anyone normal.

"I can't tell. He wasn't exactly a "people" person." Rob shrugged. "The point is, he didn't want to know much about us, and we didn't much care about him."

"Did he ever have any arguments with the people in your lab? Or maybe people from another department?' She was thinking of Felix Grant.

"Why would you say that?" Robert asked, getting slightly nervous.

"Well you mentioned he wasn't exactly well-liked. In my experience, when the work-floor gossips like that about their boss, they usually hate his guts." She explained, remembering clearly how it like was when she had her desk job at HC Clements.

"Oh no." Rob hastily replied, shaking his head and not knowing where to look or where to put his hands. "No absolutely not. Everyone got along just fine."

"Is anyone missing?" Donna asked, noticing that he was lying rather badly.

"Who? What? What do you mean?" Rob blurted, thinking of Cathy.

"From the staff. Did anyone not show up at work after professor Duinkerk died?"

"No." This time the lie was so obvious that she actually started to feel sorry for him. "Everyone is here. Why would someone not show up? It's not like we have anything to _hide_."

"Okay then." Donna crossed her arms over her chest. "Introduce me to everyone."

"Excuse me? What?"

"I want you to introduce me to everyone of this department." Donna repeated, looking very strict and authoritative.

It was no use trying to think up an excuse, when Donna had her mind on something, you better not try to contradict her. So Rob took her to meet all of his coworkers, and she shook hands with everyone, or so it appeared.

"Right. 31." She muttered, keeping the score in a notebook. "So just remind me, you said everyone was working today?"

"Yes. I did." He was getting very frustrated by her insistence. "And now you've met every single one of them. The whole bloody floor."

"So there are 31 people working in this department, including you, that would make 32 in total."

That is correct." Rob replied, hoping that she was now finally done with him. "Can I go back to work now?" He half-pleaded.

"But that's not right, is it?" Donna noted, flipping over the page where she had kept a different type of score. "You are not telling me the truth."

"What? No, that's absolutely not true!" Robert started to sweat underneath his T-shirt. "Seriously, I am shocked! I've been nothing but honest with you! Lying to the police? I wouldn't dare!"

"Because there are 33 desks occupied. I counted each and single one of them while you were showing me around. There are 33 people working in this department, and one is certainly missing." She concluded smartly and gave him a cheeky look, before she reverted back to strict agent-mode. "Why did you lie?"

Robert looked at her with a shell-shocked expression on his face.

"Okay, I admit it, I am so sorry! I just panicked." Robert confessed. "I swear I didn't want to lie to you! Oh God I am not going to jail now am I?"

"Not if you cooperate, starting now. Who are you trying to protect? And remember, you're speaking to a police officer here."

"I didn't want to mention her, because she's got nothing to do with this." Robert rambled on in pure panic. "You don't know Cathy. She's a sweet girl. She would never do something to harm anyone."

"All right, all right, I get it." Donna said, trying to make sense out of this. "Tell me…Who's Cathy?"

**3.**

He knew that she was coming a full minute before Cathy actually wandered into the room.

"Don't." He ordered, lifting a finger to shush her before she could start asking stupid questions again. "I will explain what I have done. Let me finish this first. It's rather delicate."

A moment later, he pulled the sheet off the table, presenting to her with a grand gesture what was hidden underneath.

Cathy just looked at it. She should be horrified really, but one does get used to this kind of stuff when you lived with the Master long enough. "What are you?" She commented cynically. "The animal serial killer of the neighborhood? Another bloody pet?!"

"It was this or misses Lauren." The Master replied with a grin. Cathy was not even entirely sure that he was joking. She inspected the poor creature, noticing that the life support system was switched off.

"You've been operating the whole day on a dead dog?"

"It's not dead." The Master replied, rolling his eyes. "Take a better look."

"It's not breathing." She put her hand on the animal to check for a pulse. "And there is no heart beat." She sighed. "Where did you get this from? Whose dog is this?"

"Oh don't ask stupid questions. You know that's irrelevant, and it's not dead, not as long as I've got this." He waved a microdisk in front of her nose, only to get her frowning back at him without a clue of what he was rambling about.

"Still no big lights up there then." He complained. "Honestly, I am getting so sick of talking to myself."

He inserted the disk into the supercomputer and typed in a few codes to start up the program.

"Hey!" Cathy shouted, recognizing the code. "That's the program that I've written to map brain-cell activities. What have you done to it? I can't even recognize the display."

"I improved it." He had worked hard to get this done as fast as possible. He was still in doubt if the reappearance of the Timelady was a figment of his unraveling mind or a real premonition of his impending doom, but either way, he better try to complete his plans before he ran out of time. "It desperately needed to be rewritten to manage the megatons of calculations that these experiments require. Your laptop also needed a bit more umpf. I had to upgrade that as well to let everything run smoothly."

"What is my hairdryer doing there?" Cathy studied the bizarre machine with growing puzzlement, and picked up the dryer out of curiosity.

"Don't touch that!" The Master barked. "One wrong movement and you can compress this entire place into a singularity, creating a black hole that will suck up your entire solar system! If you want to kill yourself and all of your fellow biped apes, go ahead and play with it, otherwise – Leave it!"

"What with what?" Cathy blurted. Frightened to death after his warning, she put her hairdryer back as carefully as if she was handling a ticking timebomb. She didn't notice the little smirk on his face, not knowing that the Master was only messing with her head.

"I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of your work." The Master told her, still smirking. "Your notes actually did make a contribution, and gave me the correct insight into how to complete Rachel Boekbinder's work on mapping the human brain…Clever little Rachel." He muttered, remembering that one small shining moment, in which he had actually done something good in his life, before swiftly dismissing it again as a horrible mistake.

"She discovered that there were 11 possible types of bio-electrical signals that could trigger brain cells to form new connections. You've narrowed that number down to 6 by the process of elimination. Now, if you can somehow map these 6 signals, feed them into a computer program, and extrapolate that data to design an algorithm to predict their path to every external stimuli, it would be possible to simulate precisely how someone would react to anything, from the traffic lights turning red to how one would behave under social stress. You would, in fact, have recreated a man's personality."

"Yes I know that." Cathy answered, irritated by his lecturing. "I know that it can be done theoretically, but that's like wishing for the moon. It's science fiction! I did this research only on a few isolated brain cells. You're talking about a complete brain here. Even if it's only a rodent's brain it would be far too complicated to chart. You will need like a supercomputer, and millions and millions of hours of complex calculations..." She finally shut up and stared at the image that he had summoned on the screen.

"That is a rather pessimistic estimate. It didn't take me nearly that long." He punched in the final code to start the sequence. "There you are." He told her, as the screen now showed a turning 3D image of a brain, the white dots that represented every working neuron were firing, forming different patterns as the Master went through a pulldown screen of simulations. "The process of thought. The secret of memory. All compressed and stored in one gigabite of virtual space. All that this creature loves, hates and knows, all that it once was, is in here, in this single file."

He let go of the mouse and leaned back, leaving the program to run by itself. "The great mystery of the mind finally revealed. Dr. Cathy Summers, remember this moment, for today, we have created a map of the soul."

There was a dramatic pause as the Master contemplated. "Well, at least that would be if a dog has a soul." He shrugged, completely ruining the moment. He turned to her. "What do you think?"

"That's…amazing." She responded, completely baffled and getting quite emotional. "I am sorry…It's just…I have worked so hard to only figure out what was happening in a handful of neurons, and you did this for an entire brain, in like what? Three days?"

"Two days." The Master answered smugly. "Two and a half, I didn't exactly start until lunchtime on Monday."

"Yeah." Cathy sucked in a deep breath to calm herself, still in awe of what she had witnessed. "What now?"

"Now we need to test it of course."

"Test what?"

The Master gave her a knowing smile. "Fetch Tommy out of the fridge and I will show you."

_**TBC, meanwhile please review and comment.**_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**1.**

At least 10 meters underground, in a secrete passage way that linked the medical university to the old abandoned morgue at the other side of the street, two figures were walking side by side. Dressed in their long white coats, they looked like strange ghosts strolling in the semi-darkness of the ill-lit tunnel.

"I told you, contact them yourself!" Grant said, keeping a firm pace. He sounded irritated. "_You_ made the mistake of letting two unauthorized persons into our lab. So _you_ tell them." Van der Kamp was trying to keep up with the younger scientist, but was soon getting out of breath.

"But I did! I did check their papers! They showed their IDs and everything. It all looked like the real thing. If it wasn't that you asked me to make that phone call to the health and safety office, we wouldn't even know that they were frauds."

"So that means there is even more reason why the Corporation should know about those two."

"But I can't contact them Felix. They don't trust me. At least not as much as they trust you."

They reached the end of the tunnel, which apparently ended into a blind wall.

"Oh don't tell me that you are getting nervous." Grant punched in a hidden button that lifted a tile in the wall to reveal a small keyboard.

"Afraid of heavy footsteps that follow you in the dark?" Grant told him with a cruel grin as he typed in the code. "Grow some balls George. You knew the risks for getting involved. You took the money and therefore the responsibility. Don't try to hide behind me now that you have fucked up. I am not your bullet-proof buddy."

He looked straight into the tiny screen to complete his retina scan. The system recognized him without problems and activated a secrete door to grant both men access.

"Please Felix." Van der Kamp tried as they stepped inside the elevator. "You know what they are capable of. You have to help me!"

"Then you should have helped me by doing your bloody job!" Grant snapped at him, turning from normal to psycho in a blink of an eye. It scared the old professor so much that he immediately shut up.

The elevator doors slid open, revealing a vast underground chamber, sterile, with concrete walls and a high arched ceiling. There were rows of tall glass tanks with pink liquid bubbling up from the bottom. Inside, naked humanoid forms were submerged in a thick soup. Their eyes were closed, and tubes and wires snaked out of their backs through puncture-holes in the skin. They were actually connected to the spinal cord to register their vital signs. The humanoid figures look very disturbing. Most of them were riddled by tumors that sprouted like malignant mushrooms out of their skin. Others lacked eyes, or ears, or had limb-like protrusions coming out of their stomachs. Inside the hidden chamber, white-coated scientists and technicians were dashing around, busy with monitoring the dormant creatures inside the tanks, while a small armyforce of soldiers silently guarded the entrance and patrolled around the room.

Grant picked up a clip-pad from tank nr 15. "Status." He muttered, and the pad switched on, providing him the required information. He wasn't too impressed by what he learned. Aggravated, he swiftly he moved on to the next tank. "Status." He repeated, and after reading the results of the tests, rolled his eyes and again moved on to the next. This was repeated a couple of times till he had enough and smashed the clip-pad on the floor in complete frustration. "This is all rubbish!" He yelled to everyone and no one in particular. "How many have we now tested? Over a 100? They are riddled with disease and imperfections, every single one of them!"

"It's the sequence." One of the senior scientists dared to speak to him. "We tried to fill in the small gaps, but some are just too big. We don't know the coding for at least 4% of the entire strand of that alien DNA. That is the problem sir."

"I know that the sequence is not complete, but that's all we got. Thank you for pointing out the fucking obvious." Grant raged.

"Having trouble professor?" Came a voice from behind him. "Is miracle day suddenly over?" The Doctor appeared out of the blue, wearing a white coat and a big confident smile on his face.

"You?!" Grant hissed like a deflating balloon. "How did you get in here?"

"Told you I was going to come back!" The Doctor replied with a silly grin. "Well not you directly, but I told him." Nodding at professor van der Kamp. " Just assuming that he will tell you. Otherwise I can image this would be rude. Anyway, what a charming place you've got here. Shame on you professor van der Kamp, you didn't show us this on the grand tour! What is it? No don't tell. Let me guess. It looks awful lot like a secret underground laboratory. A testing ground for illegal experiments on –wow – Human subjects. I mean look at this!" The Doctor said, leaning against one of the incubators and knocking on the glass. "I bet my life that you don't have a license for this."

"How did you get in?" Grant repeated the question, glaring now at the Doctor with cold hostility.

"I just followed you." The Doctor shrugged. "You were so busy sneering at your old professor that you were not paying attention." In fact, he had made a chameleon pendent for himself to sneak around Grant's laboratory unnoticed. When he saw Grant and van der Kamp leave, he followed them down into the secret tunnel. The Doctor was standing right behind Grant when he typed in the access code and entered the facilities. Getting in was actually the easy bit. The Doctor had been very busy with preparing for something huge behind Grant's back.

"Where do you get your guinea pigs from?" The Doctor inquired. "And don't tell me that you've grown them from a petridish."

The smile that appeared on Grant's face was that of a shark. "Tramps, hookers, drug addicts, just the average human scum from the streets that no-one will ever miss. Isn't it better to put them to a good use for society than to let the poor buggers die of an infection by a dirty needle or freeze to death in the depths of winter?"

"Is that how you justify yourself?" The Doctor replied, turning stern. "You are performing medical experiments on human beings!"

"Whole countries did it in the second world war. Can't see the problem." Grant shrugged.

"The problem is you Felix Grant. If this gets out, and I swear it will, your career is over. You'll be spending the rest of your life locked up behind bars, and that would be a blessing for the whole of humanity."

Grant seemed hardly impressed by the Doctor's threats. "Funny of putting it. Don't think my sponsors will ever allow that to happen. They have arranged everything you see. Paid for the facilities and the equipment. Assembled the best team of scientists a man like me could ever desire. They also took great care to supply me with the right kind of testing material." He stepped closer to the Doctor. "The Infinity is a multinational business corporation worth over a whopping 100 trillion dollars. I don't think they will allow some sad little health-care paper-pusher with a conscience to ruin one of their most important projects, do you?" He warned.

The Doctor stared back hard, trying to read him. "What are you doing to these people?" His carefree calm started to worry the Doctor. This man's monstrous secret was out, shouldn't he be sweating right now?

"Oh lots of things." He mocked the Doctor. "Ever heard of stem cell therapy? I am trying to get them healthy again."

"You lied about the stem cells." The Doctor said, dropping yet another bomb on him. "You didn't design them. The cells carry alien DNA of an ancient race. That's why your cells have such an incredible healing ability. Where did you get it from?"

With this he got Grant's attention. "Who are you? Really?" He asked, finally realizing that the Doctor was not some dull civil servant.

"I am the Doctor. I am a Timelord. I belong to the same ancient race of people from which you have been messing with the DNA. What did the corporation exactly tell you? Did they tell you about their goal to bring back a dangerous alien god? Do you even know that they are just using you for that purpose, to develop the technology to enable them to reconstruct his body?"

"Oh don't you worry about me." He lifted up his sleeve to show him a tattoo on his arm. It was the mark of the Infinity. "I am not a pawn, Doctor, if that's your name. I know more than you think. The Infinity…It's not just a company. It's a cult. We worship the father of the Timelord race. I've been listening to Lord Rassilon's instructions since I was a small child. But I was not the only one who could hear him. Josef Mengele, Watson and Crick, and finally dr. Rachel Boekbinder. They all knew what was going on. Like me, they were blessed, and received the sacred whispers of our lord, disguised as the sound of drumbeats. Bit by bit, they recorded it, writing down on paper the genetic code that was needed for his resurrection. I am just the last one to put the pieces together."

The Doctor froze when he realized what the arrogant scientist was telling him. Like the ever-expanding echo of the big bang, Rassilon's essence had traveled across the universe, entering the minds of those who he needed and were receptive to Rassilon's manipulations. They received his DNA coding sequence through the sound of drums, and now the Infinity corporation had gather all that information and had handed it down to Grant for the final step.

The Doctor panicked. "Grant, listen to me, and I do realize that I am talking to a total lunatic, but you can't do this! You have no idea how dangerous Rassilon is! You have to destroy this information!"

"Right." Grant muttered, amused by the Doctor's reaction. "Let me think about it… Nope. I don't think so."

"If you're not going to destroy it, I will." The Doctor's threatened.

"Pfff. I would like to see you try. Look around you, you dimwit. These army muppets aren't for show. In fact, I can predict quite accurately that you won't be able to get out of here alive. Let alone that you will be able to ruin anything for me."

"Oh." The Doctor muttered, then smirked cheekily. "- but I already did."

The lights suddenly switched off followed by a complete electricity shutdown. Grant rolled his tongue over his lips and stared accusingly at the Doctor. "Very clever." He muttered. "Assuming this is you, but not clever enough."

A couple of lights came back on, and most of the computer consoles went back online. "Emergency generators are now switched on." Reported one of the technicians who monitored the power grid of the entire facility.

"You hear that Doctor?" Grant replied triumphantly. "You don't think that that little trick was going to stop me, do you?"

"Of course not. It only slows you down a bit, still slowing down is good." He replied, watching two men run up to Grant with anticipation. "But this on the other hand…will probably make quite a dent."

Grant turned around and saw steam coming out of the cryopreservation room. "The cryo-units!" Reported one of the men as he tried hard to breathe and speak at the same time. "They are heating up sir!"

"Yeah, I might have messed with the generator a bit." Confessed the Doctor, not without a cockish smile. "Reversed and amplified the circuits, pumped up the voltage. Your deep-freezers must be reaching boiling point by now, not very good for your DNA."

"Get the samples out." Grant ordered the scientists. "Don't just stand there, get them out now!"

"We've already tried, but it's locked." Replied one the two men. "The access-code stopped working."

Everybody in the room jumped and dived for shelter when a massive explosion above them shook the foundations of the underground chamber. As pieces of the ceiling rained down on Grant's horrified crew, the Doctor calmly remained standing, and wheeled his sonic screwdriver in the air.

"Yeah…that would be the animal facilities." He admitted, giving Grant another one of his cocky smiles. "A gas leak this time. Strange that nobody noticed it before they went home. I must say, for scientists you lot are incredible sloppy."

"You have destroyed my mice!" Grant raged.

"I did those poor animals a favor. Who the hell wants to live forever when doctor Felix Grant is around."

The scientific staff started to panic when they noticed that the pink soup inside the tanks was bubbling violently. All of the warning lights turning red.

"Felix, they're cooking inside." Van der Kamp shouted. "The Doctor is destroying our human test subjects!"

"Yes, and for that I am sorry." The Doctor answered, although he was fully aware that Grant's cruel experimentation methods had killed off their sense of self years ago, leaving only the tissue alive like an emptied house waiting for the next owner to move in.

"You've destroyed my entire life's work and you're _sorry_?" Grant shouted at him, deranged with anger.

"I wasn't talking to you!" The Doctor shouted back.

"You are killing them!"

"They already have died by your hands. I am merely ending the suffering of their flesh."

Grant's voice suddenly changed, and a red glow came to his eyes. "Lord Doctor. Lord Victorious."

A pressing darkness descended upon room. "What made you change? The man who never could fire a gun?"

"Rassilon." The Doctor tried to control his own voice when he spoke his name, but he was shaking inside. "Where is Anne? Where are you hiding her?"

As quickly as the red glow had appeared, it vanished again, leaving Grant blinking and staring incoherently, before he focused back on the Doctor.

"The sequence! The Sequence stored in the central computer system." He muttered, holding on the railing to steady himself. "Don't get him near the consoles!" He shouted at the men in arms.

"Can't we just shoot him?" Opted one of the guards, who was not very eager to get anywhere near the dangerous Timelord.

"Right, excellent suggestion." Grant raised himself straight. "Shoot the Doctor." He ordered.

The guard was taking aim when van der Kamp intervened. "No stop! We can't!"

Grant stared at him like he had completely lost his marbles.

"Why not?!" He fumed.

For a moment, the old professor was opening and closing him mouth like a gold fish blowing bubbles. "We…we might need him."

"For what?!"

Meanwhile, the Doctor was fiddling his sonic behind his back, keeping it out of sight of Grant and his gun-yielding brutes. He pressed in the last button and an eardrum shattering sound boomed through the chamber. The humans were forced to cover their ears. The consoles flashed off and on, while on screen the DNA code started to disappear.

"No!" Grant shouted, he pulled the riffle out the soldier's hands and was about to fire at the defenseless Doctor, when a blast shot him in his hand. He screamed in pain and frustration, and dropped the weapon on the floor.

Unit and Judoon soldiers came marching. They immediately opened fire with their laser guns at the Infinity soldiers. Quickly heavily outnumbered, Grant's armed men had no chance to hold the place and went into retreat. Grant, with his hand blasted to a bloody stump, attacked the Doctor in blind rage. He grabbed a syringe from the closest table and was about to stab him in the neck with it. The Doctor was forced down to ground. Looking over Grant's shoulder, he saw a silhouette of a woman holding a lasergun. "River, no!" He yelled.

River Song fired and Grant, warned by the Doctor's shouting, wheeled around and held his enemy in the way of the blast. The doctor was hit in the shoulder. River immediately rushed over to his aid, and found him bleeding, lying on top of the criminal scientist. She pushed Grant off the Doctor.

"You son of bitch." River muttered, and aimed her weapon at the mad scientist, but before she could restrain him, Grant's soldiers opened fire at River, and Grant scrambled away, retreating with van der Kamp to the back of the chamber.

River Song's men kept flooding in and soon Grant found himself surrounded, forced with his back against the wall with only a handful of remaining soldiers to protect him. As the enemy troops were closing in, van der Kamp searched frantically and finally found the hidden controls. The wall behind them suddenly dissolved, revealing an emergency escape route. Not keen to let their targets escape, the Unit and Judoon soldiers stepped up their assault. As the Infinity soldiers shielded off the worst of the attack, Grant and van der Kamp fled through the open portal. As soon as they had passed through, the wall began to reappear again and closed up completely, leaving the last Infinity soldiers trapped at the wrong side.

A UNIT captain ordered an immediate cease-fire, intending to take the Infinity soldiers alive. The Judoons however, had a completely different strategy in mind.

"You are being catalogued." A senior Judoon soldier spoke through his translator to the last three enemy soldiers who had already put down their weapons and had their hands raised up in surrender. "Charge: Affiliation with the Infinity and physical assault. Plea: Guilty. Sentence: Death." The Judoons fired at once and the three men were vaporized.

"Oh no not again." River Song sighed, rolling her eyes. "Can someone get these hot heads out of here! I need prisoners who can still talk, not people who can fit inside the bag of a vacuum cleaner!" She gestured to the Unit soldiers to lead the Judoons away and more in particularly out of sight of the Doctor, who was starting to regain consciousness.

"Hello sweetie." She greeted him warmly as she cradled his head in her arms, feeling so very relieved that he wasn't too badly hurt. She had already checked the wound. Despite the blood loss, it was only superficial. She had seen him gone through much _much_ worse. "Oh don't try to get up now." She gently pushed him back. "I can handle this. You just lie down and count the tweedy birds circling around your head." She turned to the Unit officer who came to her for a report.

"Mam." He saluted her. "We checked. They've escaped through an inter-dimensional fluctuation portal. It has completely resealed itself and there is no way of tracking down where it had opened to the other side."

"A fluctuation portal? Where the hell does the Infinity Corporation get these things from?" River wondered. "Secure the parameters." She told the officer. "Arrest the scientists. Get them all in for interrogation. And don't let the Judoons loose on them. Tell them to go back to their barrack ships and wait for new orders. Leave a small team behind to clean up the facility. Get me captain Bulrop to report to me on that. Not a trace of Felix Grant's work must be left after we're done. Although I must admit, you've not left us much work to do." She turned her attention back to the Doctor. "My have you have been thorough this time."

The Doctor struggled back up. "River."

She gave him a radiant smile. "Yes sweetie."

He looked around, amazed by the sheer number of Unit and Judoon troops that had invaded the underground secret laboratory and the efficiency of the operation. _Typical River Song._ He thought. _It rather suited her, not that he knew her too well…not yet._ "How did you know I was here?"

She showed him the spybird. "Next time when you try to spy on someone, don't use a badly converted homingbot."

"Ah. I did wonder why they took so long." The Doctor muttered, getting back up on his feet. His shoulder hurt like hell, best to pretend that it wasn't. He had learned over the years that he could spare himself a lot of pain simply by ignoring it. "River, what are you doing here?"

"I am working for the Shadow Proclamation, remember? We've been spying on Felix Grant for ages. We didn't want to show our hand too soon before everything was in place, but of course, after I found out that you were in trouble, we had to improvise."

"How did you know I was in trouble?" The Doctor asked with a baffled frown.

"Are you ever not?" Her smile disappeared. "You left me. You abandoned me in that painting back in Cole manor."

"I had to." The Doctor replied with good dose of guilt. "You would have gone after him."

"And I've been searching for you ever since. I've been following you two, all across the universe and through the timevortex, but every time I was one step behind, until now."

A Judoon marched up to her. "Reporting for orders professor Song."

"The shadow proclamation and UNIT. You have been busy." The Doctor whistled. "And since when is professor a military rank?"

"Since they have recruited me." River answered cheekily, before she continued to explain. "The Shadow Proclamation has been going after this a long time now. Ever since you brought the Master back, they had registered disturbances in time. Signs were popping up all over the place, indicating that reality was being altered and history reshaped to secure Rassilon's resurrection. Events that the Master had a hand in coming to be."

"That wasn't his fault." The Doctor defended the old Master. "He was tricked by Rassilon."

"Nevertheless, the results are the same. Over the ages the Infinity cult has become more and more powerful. In this last decade they have come to own half of this planet. Even the most secret government divisions are now working for them."

"They bought themselves an army?"

"Armies Doctor, as in multiple. NATO, the CIA, UNIT. They are all working for the Infinity now. Lucky for us, some of these men weren't so dumb to believe everything they were told, and switched sides. On the last count, one third of the old UNIT is now fighting for the Shadow Proclamation, although there hasn't been much open warfare…not yet. The corporation is keeping a low profile, but something is brewing Doctor. A storm is coming, and you and the Master are right in the middle of it." She paused and gazed at him. "Doctor, look at me. You can't run away forever. You can't protect him forever. I know what I saw through the prophesy of the Oods. He's the man who is going to kill you, the same man who will cause the end of the entire universe. Now I can't let that happen. So please…Tell me. Where is he?"

"I don't know." The Doctor stared at the ground, making it difficult for River to read if it was a lie or not.

"Right." She said, realizing that she was getting nowhere with him. "Captain Bulrop. Are you still waiting for orders? Arrest the Doctor." She told the Judoon officer. "Don't harm him in any way!" She added, remembering that she was talking to a Judoon.

"You are arrested in the name of the Shadow proclamation." The Judoon barked and wrapped his thick muscular arms around the Doctor's torso, fixing his arms by his side.

"What? No!"

"Take his sonic screwdriver and hand it over to me." River ordered another Judoon soldier.

"River! What are you doing?!"

"If I don't know where your killer is, at least I can now know where you are." She explained, stepping away from him as she was handed the sonic. "By the authority vested in me by the Lady of the Shadow proclamation, I hereby declare the Doctor's arrest for aiding the escape of the dangerous intergalactic criminal known as the Master."

"Sentence?" The Judoon inquired.

"Imprisonment." River decided.

"No! No River! No!" The Doctor begged as the Judoon literally lifted him from the floor and carried him away. "You can't do this!"

"Cuff and link him up. Take him on board with the others." River ordered, ignoring his pleas.

**2.**

The door to Cathy's apartment was left wide open.

"Cathy?" Rob tried as they climbed the last few steps up the staircase. "Are you home?" He was followed by Donna and misses Lauren who had opened the front door for them after they rang Cathy's doorbell but received no response.

"Oh how many times did I tell that girl to lock the door?" Misses Lauren complained. "She doesn't want my cats to get in, you see, but she keeps leaving a gap for them to sneak inside." As if to prove her point, a white cat slipped between Donna's legs and sprinted up the steps. "Oh no…Crissy, no don't!" Misses Laurens shouted, but cats of course seldom listen to their human masters, and this one sniffed her way into Cathy apartment before the elderly lady could get a hold on her.

"We're just worried about her." Roy explained to misses Lauren. He had introduced Donna as one of Cathy's colleagues. He didn't want her landlady to think that she was in trouble with the police. "She has not showed up at work for a couple of days. So we thought she maybe caught the flue or something."

"Well isn't that sweet." Misses Laurens totted. "That's really touching. You don't often see that anymore that young people nowadays care so much about others. You don't need to really worry about Cathy though. I'm sure that her new flatmate, mister Oakdown, is taking excellent care of her. He's such a nice man! Very good with animals too. He just adores my cats."

"Cathy's flatmate is a bloke?" Robert asked, getting even more worried about his friend now. "How can you let an attractive single young woman share a flat with a guy she doesn't know?"

"Never mind that." Donna shushed. Her heart skipped a beat. "Misses Laurens, did you say Oakdown?"

"Yes." The elderly lady confirmed. "Funny name isn't? I am sure it's British. It's not a Dutch name."

"He called himself Oakdown. Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes. Martin Oakdown, that's his name. I am old but not senile dear."

Donna turned away from her and stepped inside the flat. "Cathy? Cathy Summerfield! Are you there?" She quickly checked the living room, the two bedrooms and the bathroom, before she walked into the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the apartment that seemed pretty much normal, this little area of the flat looked like something that the Doctor could have left behind after a week of intensive tinkering in one of the Tardis spare rooms. The sight of it made all of Donna's doubts vanish like snow melting in the hot sun.

"This stuff, it's all coming from our lab." Robert muttered, noticing the tray-racks filled with labeled tubes, the operation instruments and the bundles of electrodes. "What the hell is this? What has she been doing in here?"

Donna picked up a notebook from the messy kitchen table. She couldn't understand any of the notes, and she didn't recognize the handwriting, but what she did recognize are the strange circular symbols in which the scribbles were written. It's Gallifreyian, the language of the Timelords.

Something furry darted underneath the table and misses Lauren shrieked. Donna jumped and dropped the notebook.

"What was that? Was that a dog?" Robert opted. From the three people in the room, he was the only one who got a good look at it.

"A dog? What is a dog doing in here?" Misses Lauren muttered, getting upset. "I've told them both quite clearly that I won't rent the flat out to people with pets, and certainly not dogs! I rent this place out half-furnished. These ill-mannered beasts can complete ruin my carpet."

"Misses Lauren would you mind just to shut up." Donna told her. A barking sound came from below. She cautiously approached the kitchen table and lifted the tablecloth. Curious, they all looked under there.

"Tommy?" Misses Lauren mumbled, baffled to find her cat hiding in a corner. "Oh my dear, where have you been? I've been looking for you for days now." She wanted to pick her up, but Donna held her back.

The cat flattened her ears and growled, baring her teeth at misses Lauren. When the landlady recoiled her hands in fear, Tommy started to bark aggressively like a dog trying to scare away an intruder.

"Oh my God!" Misses Laurens shouted, covering her mouth in shock. Oh my God!"

"What is wrong with it? " Rob asked, backing away from the cat from hell. "It's like it's bloody possessed or something."

"It's a cat who thinks it's a dog." Donna concluded, remembering in the surgical equipment that lay scattered over the table. "Or maybe a dog in a cat's body. Anyway, it's a real freakshow. He must have been experimenting on it. What the hell is the Master up to?"

"Wait a minute, did you say experimenting? On my poor Tommy!?" Misses Lauren yelped. She looked like she was about to faint.

"Who did this?" Robert asked, looking at Donna. "It can't be Cathy. I know what you think, but we're not mad scientists that go out to abduct people's pets to do whatever the hell we want in their own flat. There are tons of rules and regulations for this, and Cathy knows that very well."

"I know it's not her." Donna replied. "It's her flatmate."

"What? You mean that British guy?"

"Robert, listen to me. I can see that you care about Cathy a lot. So I will be frank with you. Your friend is serious danger."

"What? What do you mean? What kinda of danger?" Rob rambled.

"That man she's been living with is a murderous psychopath. If you have any idea where she is, where she could be…please…think. Think and tell me."

For a moment, Donna thought that Robert wouldn't be able to help her out because he looked like he might be too much in a state of panic, but then he managed to come up with something.

"The hospital." He blurted, it was the only other place he could think of where she could be right now, if she was still unharmed. "She must have gone to her sister Anne."

Donna gave him a wide-eyed stare. "Anne?"

"Yeah. She has a little sister who has been in a coma since they were little." Robert explained. "Cathy lost both her parents. The only one she's got left is Anne."

"Oh my God.' Donna gasped, covering her mouth.

"What? What's wrong now?" Rob asked, getting really nervous now.

"Take me! Take me to that hospital right now!" She told him, well aware that she was half-ignoring the Doctor's warning that she should not go after the Master on her own. Robert, fearing for Cathy's safety, agreed and they left the apartment in a hurry. When they were half-way down the staircase they both jumped when they heard a horrified scream coming from the Cathy's kitchen, followed by loud swearing.

"What the heck is happening now?" Robert asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Oh that sounds like misses Lauren." Donna said. "I think she might have found the rest of the dog." She ran past Robert and slapped him on his back to make him hurry up. "Come on Cathy's friend. Don't worry too much about misses Lauren. She can't help it that she's not a dog person."

**3.**

The Doctor was pacing up and down restlessly inside his prison. River's goons had locked him up inside a stormcage. The thing was made of Judonian steel bars of at least an arm thick, and without his sonic screwdriver, it would be hard for the Doctor to get out.

"Hello sweetie." River greeted him, appearing at the other side. "I must say this is a rather strange sight. Usually I am the one who's staring at you from the other side. Can't say I don't like it though." She added with a naughty smile.

"River!" The Doctor ran forward and grabbed hold of the bars. "Let me out of here, now!"

"I don't think so. Not as long as the Master is still around. You are safe in here my love." She explained to him with confidence.

"If you don't let me out I'll break out." The Doctor threatened, really anxious now and so very aware that he was wasting valuable time.

"Ha, not a chance!" River answered, resting her hands on her hips. "I've designed this cage myself. It has multiple layers of security, timelocks, forcefields, matterlines, you name it, not to mention that it is made out of ten inch thick Judonian steel. It's got everything I could think of that my own lousy cell doesn't have, and let me tell you, after so many breakouts it's hard not to become an expert. Of course I had it made with someone else in mind, but as long as I got one of you two boys behind bars,_ and_ keep you both miles apart from each other that's fine by me. You're not going to come out Doctor, not unless I let you out."

"River, listen to me." The Doctor begged, realizing that she was serious. "You are not a murderer. Don't go after the Master."

"Oh but I am." Her voice became grave and tense. "You don't know me as well as you one day will Doctor, but I am a murderer. I have killed before, good people, and I am not proud of that. But today I can choose. Either stand by and watch a brave man, a good man, who has touched so many lives and has saved the universe so many times die…Or I can prevent that from happening, and get rid of the deranged psychopath who's out to destroy us all." She paused, gazing at the Doctor. "Now that's a no-brainer, don't you think?"

"River, don't! He's not the same man that you've met before. He has changed!"

"Oh please. Not that conversation again. Not now my love." She told him with renewed determination.

"No that's not what I mean!" The Doctor slapped his hands on the bars in frustration. "The Master died...I've met the new Master, and trust me, that man is not going to show you any mercy. If you stand in his way he will kill you, and he will do so in absolute cold blood. You cannot face him alone."

"He regenerated?"

The Doctor nodded fervently. "He has turned into a soulless monster. To make matters worse he has also absorbed the powers of a long dead Timelord god. River, you cannot and you must not go after him on your own."

"Absorbed the power of a…What the hell have you two been doing?" River asked, baffled.

Alarms suddenly went off, and a UNIT soldier came running towards her.

"What is it?" She asked him after he had saluted her.

"Mam, it's him." The officer reported. "We've found him."

A sly grin appeared on River's lips, and her eyes glistened with keenness.

"Prepare two battleships and 1000 armed men and Judoons. We're going to bring this bad-boy home." She ordered, and followed the officer to the teleporter.

"River, what is going on?" The Doctor asked anxiously. "Who did you find?! Tell me what's happening!"

"Seal the doors." River told the officer, while she ignored the Doctor's pleas. "No-one comes in and speaks to the Doctor while I am away." She stepped on the teleporter and activated her wristband. "That man can talk his way out of absolutely anything. We can't take the risk." She added with a small smile before she vanished.

River!" The Doctor shouted helplessly after her, and rattled the bars in utter frustration.

_**TBC, meanwhile please review and comment.**_


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8  
**

**1.**

Donna and Rob were in a cab on their way to the hospital. Just when the driver spun the car around the corner and they arrived at the main-entrance, Donna's phone rang.

"Donna!" The Doctor shouted through the speaker while he kept one finger in the other ear. "Thank Gallifrey, I thought it was blocked!"

"Doctor, I've found him! I've found the Master." Donna answered excitedly. "At least I think it's him. He's renting a flat in the city under that bogus name Oakdown that he likes so much."

"That's not a fake name Donna. That's actually his real name."

"His name is Master Oakdown? Get out of here! Seriously?" Donna concluded, finding it a bit pompous and therefore very much like him. "Anyway. I went to his apartment, and found all this laboratory stuff just sitting there on the kitchentable. There were piles of notebooks filled with weird Timelord scribbles, _oh_ and we found a cat that was turned into a dog or something. Also, he's living with this girl who's got a sister named Anne. Now is that a strange coincidence or what?!" She cheered proudly. "Who would have thought hey, Donna Noble, first class detective! I felt like Dana Scully from the X-files! She's ginger too you know."

"Donna, focus please! Where are you now?"

"I am at that hospital where that girl's sister supposedly is, and I am about to go inside. Can you read my coordinates off my cellphone?" She asked while she handed over a tenner to the driver. "I can also give you the address, hang on a minute."

"No. No listen, I am not coming."

"What? What do you mean, not coming?" She stopped while Robert kept walking to the revolving door. "Oh that's typical!" She replied, getting miffed. "It wasn't easy you know! It's not everyday that things go that smoothly for me!"

"And I appreciate the effort, I really I do, but I can't come. Not right now." He paused. There was no easy way of saying this. "I am locked up. I am in prison."

"What? Why would they…Did they finally take you in for not paying all those parking-tickets you keep stuffing in the back drawer of the kitchen counter?"

"It's River Song, she found me, and arrested me. Locked me up in a stormcage on board of a Judoon spaceship. That woman! Oh that woman is really something special!" He ranted with an annoyed grin. "You know that she took my sonic screwdriver, but then forgot to take away my cellphone? How's that for logic?"

"Hang on, I am not getting half of this. Professor Song from the library? I thought she was dead. You saved whatever was left of her inside that library computer."

"Yes but she could time-travel remember? This is a younger version of her, which reminds me, if you happen to bump into River Song, not a word about what's going to happen to her in the library."

"Okay." Donna said, remembering how the poor woman came to her end. "Spoilers right? But why did she lock you up?"

"She doesn't want me to go find the Master. She believes that I am in mortal danger. Donna listen, I can't get out. I tried to convert my mobile into a digital key but I just burnt my fingers on the blimey forcefields. There is no other way…" He paused before he pushed the bad news out in one breath. "You'll have to bring the Tardis to me."

"Wait a minute…You want me to fly the Tardis? The great blue box with all the weird handles and buttons and dials, and not one steering wheel in sight because you thought the dashboard looked so much cooler without one…You want me to fly _that thing_, to you?"

"Really…It's not that difficult as it sounds." The Doctor replied, scratching the back of his head.

"Do you know what's going to happen? Seriously. I am going to crash and die. I am going to blow myself up after flying into some gigantic star, and you are going to spend the rest of your life locked up in that weather-cage."

""It's a stormcage actually. Thank River Song for that, I really didn't fancy getting frostbites this time." The Doctor rambled on. "It will be fine, promised!" He continued lightheartedly. "Just keep me on line, and I will guide you through this."

Needless to say, Donna was not really convinced. "What about the Master?"

"We will get to him as soon as you break me out, but for now, leave him alone! Do you remember where we parked?"

"Of course I do. On the parking lot, next to a red car with fuzzy dice behind the front window."

"Splendid…That was three days ago. Can't expect the car to be there anymore of course. Shopping area. Busy parking lot…" The Doctor mumbled. It's a good thing that the chameleon circuits were still bust. Otherwise he might have had the bonkers idea to hide the Tardis from the Master by masquerading it as another car. Donna would certainly have never found it again.

"Well I can't miss a big blue police box, now can I?" She told him, getting irritated. "I am actually not that far away." She replied after she checked the coordinates on Google maps. "I think I can get there in less than 10 minutes." She started to walk.

"Hey! Where are you going agent Noble?" Robert asked, noticing that she wasn't following.

"I've been called away for other duties." Donna lied, facing Rob as she walked backwards. She shrugged her shoulders apolitically. "Sorry but I have to go."

"What about Cathy? You said she was in danger!"

"And she is! Look I'll come back with re-enforcement. I promise."

"But…what am I suppose to do? Should I check on her?"

"No! Whatever you do, don't go in there and try to find her on your own!" She told him, remembering the Doctor's urgent warnings about the Master. "Just wait for me here. I'll be right back." She added, hoping that they could indeed return to this point in time with the Tardis after she had successfully busted the Doctor out.

Rob watched Donna hurry away. He hesitated, getting more and more frustrated and worried about Cathy. "Sod this." He muttered, he went inside.

**2.**

"Here. Secure this on her head." The Master ordered Cathy as he handed her some sort of exotic looking helmet. "Fasten the straps tightly. This connection is absolutely vital till her mind is digitally stabilized. It must be kept on at all times during the transfer, or else all would have been for nothing."

They had transported everything that they needed from their flat to Anne's room in the hospital. The supercomputer that the Master had created was standing ready, connected with long wires to the electrodes that were imbedded into the helmet. When he switched on the machine and checked on Anne, he briefly touched her hand. The contact immediately stirred up memories, and he recalled the way she had looked at him that very last time he had called her his wife. Unwanted emotions surfaced, and he quickly let go.

Outside Anne's room, Robert had just stepped out of the elevator of the 11th floor in search of Cathy, only to find the entire intensive care unit to be frozen in time. He bumped into two statue-like nurses who had stopped while they were wheeling a laid up patient down the corridor, and hit his elbow on a rock-hard tray with medical tools that a surgeon's assistant was carrying on his way to the operation room. "I am sorry." He squeaked, absolutely freaked out by the strangeness of it all. No-one reacted. The people around him were standing perfectly still like they were just cold inanimate objects. Even the air seemed to be stagnant and dead, with no trace of the typical hospital antiseptic smells that Rob dreaded so much.

"Hello?" He asked, realizing that his voice carried an eerie echo in here. The sound was not only bouncing off the walls, but off the stationary people too. "Hello?! Is there someone who can hear me? Cathy! Cathy are you here?"

Cathy looked up and turned her head to the door. "Did you hear that?"

The Master didn't reply. He was too busy feeding in the required codes to start up the program. With nimble fingers he typed in the sequence and summoned two windows on the screen placingthem side by side. Each one of them showed a map of a brain. One of a human, and the other one of a Timelord. He was going to separate Rassilon's mind from that of Anne, extracting it from the dormant queen and storing it inside the machine. White dots that constitute the map started to appear as the transfer successfully was initiated.

"Did you hear me? There is someone outside." Cathy repeated more urgently.

The Master just turned to face the door when Robert stumbled in. "Cathy!" Overwhelmed by relief, he rushed over to his friend and hugged her tightly. "Thank God I found you! I thought you've turned to stone like that lot outside! What the bloody hell is happening here?"

"Rob! Why are you here? You really shouldn't be here!" Cathy answered, horrified.

"I came to get you out. There was this police woman, she came to work to investigate the murder of professor Duinkerk. We went to your flat and we found all this weird stuff in your kitchen, and did you know you had a barking cat in the apartment?!" Her friend rambled.

"Yes Rob, I know." Cathy glanced over at the Master, trying to read his reaction to Rob's uninvited presence.

"And then she warned me that you were in danger. She told me your new flatmate was a freaking psychopath. Is that true? Were you with him? Did he hurt you?"

"What? No, he didn't." Cathy replied, getting confused. "Rob, please calm down first. What woman, who told you that?"

"A police woman. Flaming red hair, a lot of attitude…what's her name…Dana, Dena…"

"Donna."

They both turned and looked at the Master.

"Her name is Donna Noble. The Doctor's metacrisis freak, and possibly the most irritating and obnoxious woman in the entire universe." He walked up to Rob, eyes blazing. "You've led her here, didn't you?" He hissed accusingly.

"Is this him?" Rob asked Cathy. Then he finally noticed the strange contraption on Anne's head and the weird devices that were placed around her bed. "Get behind me Cathy." He urged her, pushing her back and shielding her off. "Oakdown is it? That police woman was right. You are dangerous! What the bloody hell are you doing to her sister?"

"I am trying to save her." The Master stated coldly. "And you've led the one man who can stop me straight here, you IDIOT!" He screamed, going from calm to mad rage within a blink of an eye.

"Please don't!" Cathy begged, placing herself between the two men. "Robert, listen to me. I know how this looks, but he's really trying to help me. Just…don't provoke him!"

"Cate, this is crazy." Rob grabbed her firmly and pulled her aside, hoping to bring her back to her senses. "That bloke has Anne hooked up to some-sort of weird Frankenstein machine. Any sane person who takes one look at this knows that this will never work! You can get her killed!"

"Enough!" The Master raised his hand and a blast hit the young man full in the chest and smashed him with his back against the opposite wall. Silenced and restrained, but not time-frozen, Robert screamed in agony as the Master forced his legs and arms to spread apart while he pulled on every limb in a different direction.

"No! NO!" Cathy shouted, horrified. "No don't do this! Let him go!"

"Shut up." The Master spat vindictively. He had read Robert's mind and knew that Donna went back to get the Doctor. Spiteful that this bumbling idiot had spoiled his plans, he was absolutely determined that he should suffer and turned his hand slowly to force the bowels inside Robert's belly to twist and twist and twist…

"Stop it! You're killing him! Stop it!" Desperate to put an end to this, she ran over and slapped the Master hard in the face. "Stop it now!" Cathy yelled…and then froze with her hand still half in the air, terrified of his wrath.

Slowly Master spun around, leaving poor Robert to suffer in silence as he turned his deadly attention on Cathy.

"How dare you to raise your hand at me."

"I…I…I didn't." Cathy stumbled, backing away from him, and seeing perhaps for the very first time, how truly frightening he was. Gone was the eccentric and annoying man she had been living with for the last few days, and out came the monster.

The Master grabbed her wrist painfully. "You wretched little creature!" He spat, and slapped her so hard that she spun around and crashed into a screen.

"Your life has no other purpose, but to serve me!" He pointed out.

"What?" She muttered as she scrambled away, completely terrified by his mad outburst of rage."What do you mean?"

A spiteful grin dawned on his face. "Cathy Summerfield, the girl who had lost everyone except for her little sister. Who would do everything to bring her back just to silence her guilt. The girl, who drew the shortest straw, because she cared." He crouched down beside her, and whispered into her ear while the machine continued to run tirelessly to separate Rassilon's consciousness from that of Anne. "Do you even remember when Anne was born? Do you actually have any recollection of her from before the accident?"

Flashbacks of her childhood came to her. Happy moments from when her parents were still alive, birthdays, Christmas days in the snow, picnics in the park, summer holidays at the seaside. In all, she could remember them. Her mother, her father...their love and devotion to her…but Anne did not exist in that blissful past.

Anne was never born.

"I placed her in your life. I took your parents from you, so you would feel responsible for what happened, and be motivated to take care of Anne. You grew up with a desire to save your sister, a desire that I have implanted in your heart by manipulating your guilt and sense of loneliness. Your drive to excel in science, your whole academic career, your entire life was planned by me, because I needed you to hide her. To keep her safe."

Cathy gazed back at him, her expression numb. "Anne is not my sister."

"No. She is not." The Master gazed longingly at Anne who had started to stir. Her lips parted, taking in short gasps of breath.

"Who is she?"

"She is Anne Boleyn, the Tudor queen, and my beloved wife. Rassilon stole her from me. I searched everywhere, and I did anything in my capacity, even move time and space itself to get her back. You see…he cursed her. She can't wake otherwise her mind will burn…but now, with your help, I can bring her back." He turned to Cathy, eyes filled with determination. "Once the extraction is complete the meta-crisis shall be undone, and she will be able to wake up and remember me."

"You…you used me." Cathy whispered. A tear spilled down the corner of her eye.

"I needed you. I needed you to help Anne." He told her in a matter of fact voice.

"Why me?" She cried.

"My dear child. It could only be you. Always." The Master whispered. He did not want to be aware of it, but a knife turned in his hearts when he saw her tears. He suddenly understood far too well how she had suffered. What he had actually put her through.

"You've ruined me." Cathy said softly. "You've destroyed my life, took away everyone I have ever loved. Only to satisfy your own selfish goals!"

"You have all the right to hate, but don't put the blame on me Cathy Summerfield." He responded, angry with himself for letting his guilt take control over his emotions. "It's the fine workings of time that has locked us both in this most unfortunate bargain and has sealed it in the time-stream of reality. Fate and the devil has choosing you, not me."

The Master stood up and walked over to the supercomputer. On screen, a red pop-up window alerted him that the transfer was for more than 98% complete. He almost had Rassilon's complete mind trapped inside the data-sequence like a ghost inside the machine, but that wasn't all what the Master desired. He needed him alive. "No!" Cathy muttered when a second helmet was in plugged in. She remembered what had happened to the dog and the cat and feared for her friend's life. "No please don't!"

The Master ignored her pleas and fastened the helmet on Rob's head and switched it on. A violent current passed through the connecting wires and Robert convulsed when the mind of a Timelord was forced into the mind of a ordinary man, flooding it like a ferocious swarm of parasites that completely destroyed his own sense of self. His fears, his joys, his kindness, and his love for Cathy, which he had kept hidden this time, were all erased in a matter of seconds. Cathy screamed as she watched him being engulfed by the aggressive golden light. "Stop it you monster! Haven't you done enough to him?!" She sobbed in helpless rage. "Stop it! Stop it!"

But Master only had one goal in mind; to restore Rassilon back into a body made of flesh, which he maim and torture, and blood that he could spill.

_And here you are my vainglorious master. He who has deformed my life and warped my soul. _He who_ thought I was unworthy to be a Timelord, and has brought me so much misfortunes and grief. Open your eyes and see me. Open your eyes, for I am the divine instrument of your destruction!_

Robert's eyes snapped open and stared at him. His pupils were alight with an intense red glow. He opened his mouth and a beam of hellish heat shot out. His features contorted, flashing back and forth from the hated face of that of Rassilon's last incarnation, screaming in anger and agony, and that of the dying human.

The Master watched this horrific transformation with a deranged type of joy, and laughed as he witness how Rassilon fought ferociously, unable to escape the iron grip of the other Timelord.

"Master!" Rassilon sneered, enraged by the humiliation. This was followed by a scream of pure agony as the bones inside the human's skull began to crack under the immense pressure.

The Master shut his eyes and leaned back ecstatically, drinking greedily from each second of this most precious act of vengeance. "Oh yes... That is indeed my name." He whispered with a smile made stone. "And hearing you say it like this sounds like the most gracious heavenly music to my ears."

"How dare you!" Rassilon hissed as he read into the Master's mind and understood what he wanted. "You're but a diseased, miserable little WORM! You are not worthy of my GLORY!"

"My lord president." The Master replied. "I've been waiting for a very long time just to show you _exactly_ how unworthy I can be."

He pulled him up, and immediately the room exploded in a blaze of gold that swallowed up the two Timelords in a violent storm of plasma light. With his hand on Rassilon's throat, the Master lifted the tyrant from the ground while his fingers narrowed around his windpipe. His victim screamed as the weak human shell combusted by the violent contact between the two Timelords. The white glow that came pouring out of Rassilon' s mouth swirled and slithered into the master's eyes. His hand began to shake when the internal fire that ravaged Rassilon flowed into him, but he forced himself to hold on, absorbing the savage waves of energy into his own body.

"How does it feel to die, Rassilon?" The Master hissed. The heat of a million stars burnt under his skin. He stared at his nemesis, saw what he recognized as fear lurking inside those ancient soulless eyes, and laughed madly. "If it was up to me, you would die, and die, and die again!"

The machine behind him sounded alarm. On screen, the maps of the two minds were still displayed, each with its own unique neuron-firing pattern. The extraction was nearing its completion.

It was at that exact moment that Anne's eyes suddenly flew open. Cathy witnessed her awakening and was startled by her appearance. The Tudor queen looked soulless, tortured by her horrible experiences as the cursed bride. It was as if her ruthless lord and master had extorted all that once was good in her and had replaced it with darkness.

The woman who Cathy had once thought of as her beloved sister sat upright in bed and turned her eyes on the two Timelords, still locked in their deadly embrace. "Oh Yes, Yes." Anne breathed. Her voice was devoid of emotions except for a deep rooted hatred. "Kill him my love. Kill him for me."

The Master felt his hearts fill with pure joy when he finally heard her voice, and encouraged by Anne's words he tightened his grip on Rassilon. _Soon my love. Soon you shall be free from this devil's hold, and we will be together again. You shall rule by my side and we shall be glorious!  
_

_You've ruined me._ The Master told Rassilon, overflowing with hatred and self-loathing. _Because of you my whole life was empty…meaningless. All that I have done…All those who I have lost…and loved. All because of your cowardice and selfishness!_

Rassilon's eyes bulged out and stared back at him accusingly, two steel-grey bullets digging into his soul.

Memories flashed in front of his mind's eye, but they were not his own. The Master saw Cathy, sitting in the backseat of her father's car, playing with her favorite toy bunny. A grain lorry thundered from out of nowhere onto the one-lane road, but her dad managed to hit the brakes in time, and the deadly accident was avoided. Images of Cathy growing up, turning from a bright young child into beautiful young woman who was loved and cherished by her parents. She went to college, then university to follow her dreams to study arts. She met her first boy friend when she was 16, and had her first kiss at 17th birthday. Then she met Robert Finkel, a bumbling young scientist with great potential and a kind and caring soul, and she fell deeply in love in him. There was no doubt that Cathy Summerfield would have found true happiness and her life's dreams would all have been fulfilled, if it wasn't for his cruel interference. He had taken a innocent child from her time-stream and he had ruined her, just like Rassilon had destroyed his childhood.

_Who's the monster now, lord Master? For when I look into your eyes, I can only see the reflection of myself. The teacher and his reluctant pupil. The creation resembling the creator. _

"No." The Master muttered, shaking the visions that Rassilon's had forced on him out of his head. "You are wrong! I am _**not**_ you!" From the periphery of his vision, he saw Cathy standing next to Anne. Alarmed, he swirled around and saw her madly pulling out the electrodes out of Anne's transfer helmet while the machine was still running. His wife clutched her head and cried out a beastly scream.

"No! The Master shouted at her. "Her mind is not yet stabilized! If you stop the process now it will kill her! You will kill your own sister!"

"I have no sister!" Cathy replied bravely, and removed another handful of connections, making Anne fall back into bed, squirming of agony. "I have no one. Except for him." Cathy muttered softly, finally realizing now what Robert had meant to her.

"Cathy Summerfield, I order you to stop!" He barked.

The screen of the supercomputer flashed red with warning lights. It immediately activated the emergency program and started to extract Anne's mind to the hard drive to preserve it in digital form.

"Let him go or I will destroy her."

"You stupid cow! Robert is dead. You can't save him! If I let go you're only sparing Rassilon's life!"

"I don't care!" She cried out, heartbroken and confused. "You have lied to me before…Now let him go!" Her fingers tightened around the last connection wire. "You know I mean this."

The Master had to choose. It was either Rassilon or Anne. Slowly he let go of his arch nemesis and Rob's tormented body dropped to the floor.

Cathy wanted to run to him, but Anne clung to her arm, digging her nails so deep in her skin that she drew blood.

"What have you done to me!?" She shrieked, tossing her head manically. "My head, my head is burning! It's burning!" Cathy watched in wide-eyed horror as Anne's flesh started to melt like a wax candle in the flames, turning her beautiful features into a grotesque mask of peeling skin. Frightened to death, Cathy pulled away from her, taking out the remaining electrode, and the dying Tudor queen burst into hellish flames.

"Anne!" The Master rushed over to her, but came too late. Anne's hospital bed was set ablaze, and she was trapped inside an inferno, screaming in torment as the fire consumed her. Desperate, he ran back to the computer trying to salvage what ever was left of her mind, only to find a message on the screen stating that the transfer was incomplete and Anne's file was damaged beyond repair. Realizing now that all was lost, his brilliant mind collapsed, abandoning all rationality to give in to rage and insanity.

"You did this." He hissed, turning to Cathy. "You took her from me!"

He grabbed her by her throat. A severed cable sparking with violent energy flew in his other hand.

"Go on then…What are you waiting for?" She said, trying to be brave. "Do it. Kill me, just like you killed my parents."

The warning lights on the screen continued to flash violently. There was still a small chance. He might still able to transfer Anne's damaged mind into Cathy, but he would have to sacrifice the girl in exchange for preserving his wife's life.

Cathy spat in his face. "You're a monster." Speaking out each syllable with bile burning in her throat. "You've already taken everything from me that I love, why not take my life as well."

He tried to bring the deadly cable down on her, but his resolve crumbled when he looked into those tear-welled eyes that were so full of hatred and self-loathing.

_For when I look into your eyes, I can only see the reflection of myself._

The last lights on the screen vanished. The short window of opportunity had passed. Anne was gone.

Cathy couldn't believe that she was still alive. "Why?" She sobbed almost resentfully. "Why did you let me live?"

"So you might take you revenge, one day." He muttered. Mad with grief, and trapped inside this insane reasoning, he let her go.

_JUSTICE, lord Master._ He heard Rassilon's voice whisper to him behind the blackened bars of his burning prison. _JUSTICE._

The Master wheeled around only to discover that Rassilon was gone. His mind unraveling and plunging deeper into a downward spiral, he let out a savage cry of rage and pushed Cathy out of his way to start pursuit.

**3.**

"That was about time." Doctor muttered as the Tardis doors opened inside his cell and Donna came stumbling out. "What took you so long?"

"I got lost. Took the wrong turn around that funny solar system with the twin suns."

"You were – There is satnav onboard for crying out loud, how did you manage to still get lost?"

"Oy." She warned. "I nearly crashed into a black hole trying to fly that thing. A bit more gratitude, spaceman!"

"Come on then, lets get out of here." The Doctor rushed inside the Tardis and immediate started to prepare her for departure, stepping around the console, flipping switches and spinning dials. When the Tardis was ready, he pushed the final button to fire her up…and then the engines died.

"Oh no! No no no no, not now!" The Doctor shouted in frustration, running around to check her vitals. They all looked normal. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

He tried again, but now the engines simply refused to start.

"What's going on?" Donna asked, getting worried. "I didn't wreck her, did I?"

"Oh no." Doctor sighed when the penny finally dropped. "River! River River River!" He lamented. "Sometimes I just wished you weren't so blood clever!"

"What is wrong?"

"She left open the reception but blocked the transmission wavelength of the Tardis." The Doctor explained, annoyed as hell. "Which means that the Tardis can get in, but cannot get out." He added and slammed his hands on the console.

So we're stuck. We're both stuck." Donna muttered. A static noise came from a half-hidden speaker in the corner of their cell, followed by the voice of River Song.

"Thank you Donna Noble. You're the Doctor's companion, aren't you? I am so very pleased to finally meet you, especially when you bring me such pretty gifts. And sweetie, I did not forget to take away your cellphone. Of course not. Not really."

"Oh stupid _stupid_ me!" The Doctor responded, and slapped his forehead.

"What does she mean?" Donna asked, still puzzled.

"River tracked down your coordinates from where you've set off." The Doctor replied, kicking himself. "And let me guess, you have eavesdropped on our conversation as well?!"

"Oh sweetie, you know me so well!" She purred through the speakers. "Thanks to Donna, we now know where to find the Master. Oh and that alarm you heard before was from our undercover agent inside the Infinity cult. He was trying to contact us to lead us to Felix Grant. So you see my love, everything is going to turn out just fine. Let me take care of everything. You just make sure that you stay alive."

"River! I am begging you, don't go after the Master!"

"This is River Song, over and out." She said with a little smile, and ended the transmission, just when a UNIT soldier came to report to her in the central control room.

"What is it?" River asked, keeping a keen eye on the monitors. One of them showed the Doctor inside the stormcage, hitting his head against the bars in frustration.

"It's mocking bird again mam. This time we have successfully homed in on his signal. We now have the exact coordinates of Grant's spaceship."

"So what are you waiting for? Send out the units. We are going to take him in."

"What about the Master?"

"Oh, to deal with him, I will need something special." River replied with confidence. She hoisted herself inside a black shiny suit, made of an impenetrable type of synthetic fabric. "I want a groundtroop of 500 of your best warriors to back me up. This time, don't go stingy on the Judoons. The more savage the better. As for weapons."

With her hand resting on her hip she punched in a button and the wall opposite to her slid open to reveal a hidden room filled to up the ceiling with guns. Strolling inside, she inspected the impressive the arsenal.

"I am spoiled for choice." She commented and picked out two large plasma guns to hold them side by side. "The perfect accessories for a girl on a date with the devil himself." She added with a thin smile curling her lips.

**4.**

Rassilon fled out of the hospital. His human vessel was disintegrating rapidly. His legs were growing weak, bone grinding painfully against bone, causing him to stumble forward like an old man. Aware that the Master was close on his heels, he hurriedly crossed a road with heavy traffic. Staggering between the honking cars, he just avoided to be hit by an oncoming bus.

The Master followed him. His stride was determined and his posture was deceptively calm, but inside he was blinded by savage, murderous rage. Like a bloodhound that was only fixated on finding a wounded deer, his senses were completely oblivious to his surroundings, and he crossed the same road without the least of effort to avoid the deadly traffic. A truck that approached him head-on blinded him temporary and he squinted his eyes against the harsh lights. Aware that he could no longer evade the jaywalking lunatic, the alarmed driver hit the brakes hard, but the Master just raised his hand and the air around him solidified, creating an impenetrable force field. The truck rammed into it and the Master kept walking, unharmed.

_Why are you still running Rassilon? _The Master whispered, sending out a telepathic message to his wounded enemy. _You know you can't hide, and you can't survive for long in that human wreck. _A merciless grin appeared on the Master's lips. _Give up my vainglorious lordship. This cat and mouse game is such a waste of time. Just let me catch you and I promise I won't do anything to you that wasn't done to me. _

Rassilon fled onto a busy building site where three enormous hoisting cranes were positioned surrounding a square pit. Above the pit, builders were busy raising a metal skeleton of a new office block. Nearing the site, the Master followed his target with cold calculative eyes and made a small gesture with his hand. The metal of a nearby crane groaned loudly. Then he closed his fingers like a claw, and the supportive lattice structure contorted and gave.

Rassilon looked up in horror when the tower crane keeled over like a monstrous tree falling, threatening to crush him. He jumped down into the concrete pit, just in time before the crane came down on top of the network metal beams, folding them double. The Master waved with again with hand and a second crane came down on top, adding to the weight till the beams gave and the whole skeletal structure came crashing down with a terrifying noise, burying the fugitive underneath.

As the dust settled, the Master walked against the stream of fleeing builders, an avenging angel of death out on taking his price. He burned a hole through the wreckage and found Rassilon, trapped underneath two metal beams.

"Like I said, I won't do anything to you that wasn't done to me." The Master said, and with a malicious grin he set the structure on fire. Laughing, he watched how his hated foe became entombed inside an inferno of scorching metal.

_Justice, lord president. Remember what you told me when you left me to rot inside that burning cage?! JUSTICE._

"Stop with whatever you are doing."

From the periphery of his vision, he saw a woman in a shiny black suit pointing two plasmaguns at him.

"Step away and put your hands on the back of your head." River told him. "And don't try anything funny. You're surrounded."

Slowly, he spun around to face an impressive army of heavily armed Judoon and UNIT soldiers. Each of one of them had locked their aim on him, ready to fire on River's command.

"River Song." He muttered, distracted for a brief moment from his crime. "You are River Song."

"Don't play that amnesia trick on me, bad boy." River warned him. "It may work on the Doctor, but I don't exactly share his warm feelings for you." She squinted her eyes and studied his new face. He might have regenerated, but to River who had seen the Master at his worst, his mental health seemed to have even further deteriorated. He had a mad and bewildered look in his steel-blue eyes that she didn't like at all.

"River Song. Yes of course. How could I have forgotten about you?" A cold calculative smile crept up his lips. "The Doctor's wife! What a wonderful surprise! How nice of you to drop by, really."

He approached her, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was currently the target of her entire squadron. "Back away." River warned him. "Don't get any nearer or I swear to God, I will fire."

He just ignored her and looked up at the sky expectantly. "Is the Doctor not coming?"

"Oh you would like that, wouldn't you? Not a chance!" River replied with a mocking smile.

"Are you sure? I had half expected to see him showing up by now. You know, jumping out of his Tardis, all excited like a manic Jack in the box, wearing that moronic smile of his like a badge for good behavior. Why wouldn't he?" He continued, suddenly turning bitter. "At least he still has plenty to smile about. He still got his bloody wife. _My_ wife is DEAD!" He shouted into her face.

River backed away from him. She didn't want to show it, but she was actually frightened by his erratic behavior.

"My wife Anne." The Master continued in a softer voice, visibly touched by grief. "She is gone."

"What are you doing with that man down there in the pit?" River asked, mistaking his sadness with insanity. She stepped a little closer to take a better look at the situation. "He's on fire!" She commented, horrified by the scene.

"I know, and isn't that glorious?" He replied to her with a joyless smile as he took in a deep breath. "He's suffering in a hell of my design. Oh how I wish I could extend his torment till the end of eternity!"

"You're a mad…Madder than you ever were!" River replied, disgusted by his inhumanity.

"You're not here to stop me from enjoying myself, are you?" The Master gazed at her with contempt. "Because if you are…" He made a swift gesture with his hand and the flames in the pit flared up, setting a group of her men on fire who were standing too near the edge. "Go help them!" River screamed to the others. She shoved a gun in the Master's face, but instead of being frightened, he took the barrel and guided it to his forehead. "Come on then River Song." He challenged her, laughing madly. "Pull the trigger. Let's see how fast you are. But remember, if you fail, I am going to send you down to join him."

She could see in his eyes that he meant it. Her heart was leaping in her throat. Before River was forced to make a horrible decision, a harsh blinding light came down from sky. They all gazed overhead. High up in the stratosphere, an enormous aircraft was hovering over them. Her breath stalled when she recognized its familiar form. It was the Valiant, an earth-based warship that the Master's previous incarnation had once designed to take control over the human race. Unknowing to him, the great ship had been taken over by his enemies.

"It's the flagship of the Infinity Corporation." One of the UNIT officers shouted. "What are they doing here?"

"The man in the pit." River noticed, not without alarm. "He's gone. That must have been a teleportation beam."

"No." The Master shook his head. "NO NO NO NO! You cannot take him from me!" He screamed, frantic and enraged as the airship left the earth's stratosphere and disappeared into outer space. "RASSILON!" Tears of rage and frustration flooded his eyes. "Come back! YOU COWARD!" He fired a blast into the sky, but it failed to even reach the Valiant. Crazed with anger, he turned on River's men, his fury now focused on punishing the innocent. Spreading his two hands, he raised the fires from the pit and let it loose on the UNIT and Judoon soldiers, burning them alive. The rest of the squadron opened fire, and the Master was blasted by a canon of lasers and bullets, but none of it seem to be able to harm him.

River Song was pulled away by a UNIT officer. "Mam, this is spiraling out of control. You're not safe here. You have to leave."

"I am not a coward. I am not going to leave my men behind." She objected.

"With respect mam, there are not a lot of men left." The UNIT officer had hardly finished his sentence when he was hit and combusted into flames before her eyes. Shocked, River sent out of an emergency warning to the rest of her crew. "All units retreat! Repeat all units retreat! This is an order!"

She dived down just in time to get out of the way of an enormous fireball that blasted a group of Judoons into oblivion. Crawling on her stomach through the debris, she saw how two human soldiers lying nearly. They were on fire, rolling themselves over the ground, screaming as they were consumed by the blaze. "Retreat!" She kept shouting desperately, while the death toll mounted and the cries of the injured and dying filled the sky. "Retreat! We can't stop him! Retreat!"

When she finally heard the footsteps, she bravely turned around to face him. Her body froze when she saw him slowly raise his hand. It was as if he was holding to hellish ball of light. As he released it on her, she shut her eyes and twisted her wristband to activate her teleporter, fleeing the scene as one of the last survivors of her doomed mission.

**5.**

The Doctor sat in the corner of the cell and was taking apart the loudspeaker in an effort to convert it into something that might help them escape.

"Any ideas yet?" Donna asked hopefully.

"Three so far." The Doctor answered, keeping himself busy. "All of them are rubbish."

'Well, whatever you are doing right now might work, right?"

She had hardly finished her sentence or the Doctor threw what was left of the speaker on the floor and stamped on it in pure frustration.

"Okay." He rubbed his hands, and paced around nervously. "Four. Four completely rubbish plans so far. What next? Think brain, think!"

"Doctor." Donna mumbled weakly. She didn't feel too well, and suddenly collapsed on the ground. When she regained consciousness, the Doctor was looking down at her, his brows knitted into a worried frown, while he cradled her head in his arms.

"What's going on?" Donna muttered. "Did I just faint?"

"Yes. This is happening quite a lot to you lately." The Doctor remarked. "Tell me Donna, do you remember anything?"

"Yeah. I remember just sitting here on the cot and becoming dizzy. Then suddenly all the lights went out."

"That's not what I mean. Do you remember what happened after you lost consciousness?"

"You mean like in a dream?"

The Doctor nodded.

Donna searched her memories. "No… I don't think I actually had a dream."

"You were struggling in your sleep, shouting out a name." He didn't want to tell her, but she had almost done this every night since they've left Saltsea.

"I could have just forgotten it. That's quite normal, right? You don't necessarily remember every dream you ever had."

"Perhaps." The Doctor studied her intensely. "Donna, can you tell me about the last three nights? What did you dream?"

"I…" She paused, and gazed at the Doctor, looking very lost. "I don't know anymore."

"Doctor."

River Song stood in front of the stormcage. Her armor was torn and battered, and her cheeks were stained with soot. She didn't need to say anything. The defeated look in her eyes told him enough.

"How many?" He asked with heavy hearts.

River swallowed, and looked down shamefully. "487 soldiers from my platoon of 500. You were right. We didn't stand a chance."

"487 souls." The Doctor muttered. "That's a hell of a price to pay to prove me right."

"I am sorry my love." River said, torn by guilt.

"Don't tell me that you're sorry!" The Doctor replied angrily. "Go out there and tell this to the families of the men you've lost! And all because of your stupid recklessness!"

"I did this to save you!" River blurted. "Can't you understand, I cannot let you die!"

"River. Everyone dies. In the end that's not what truly matters. What does matter, is how we are remembered." He came close to her, leaning his forehead against the bars of his prison. "Let them remember me as am now, the Doctor who bravely faced his final fate."

River swallowed hard and shook her head.

"Please River. I can't do this. I can't put things right if you don't let me. I need your help."

"What do you need?"

The Doctor returned to her a sad smile. "An Ood in the snow."

**6.**

They landed on the white planet of the Oods, galaxies away from the war-fleet of the Shadow proclamation that patrolled the Earth's solarsystem. When the Tardis doors opened to the frosty landscape, the Doctor stepped out and inhaled the air. He followed by Donna and River and two armed soldiers. One was Judoon, the other one was human.

"Ah! Much better." The Doctor commented, stretching is legs and arms to get them going again after being cooped up for so long. "Although I can't believe there is any use in dragging these two along." Meaning the two soldiers. "We already have this on our wrists." He lifted his arm to show her the wristbands. "It's a bit of an overkill, don't you think?"

"They are here for your safety Doctor." River replied calmly.

"What? One brain and one muscle? Together they probably make up only half a functional being."

"You see! It's not an overkill at all." River smiled cheekily. She turned to the UNIT soldier. "Check their wristbands."

"Again?!" The Doctor nagged. "You've checked these things 7 times already."

"I am just making sure. These teleporters are your only life lines. Don't try to escape back to Earth Doctor." River Song told him sternly. "As soon as you get as close as the milkey way, your wristbands will be activated, and you will be transported back inside the stormcage. Remember this. I am not going to give you a second chance to kill yourself."

"If these are working teleporters, why did we still need the Tardis to get here?" Donna asked.

"Because these things are just child's play compared to what a breathing living Tardis can do. We have not only traveled in space, but also in time. We are, in fact, in the far future, millions of light years away from Earth." River said, staring in the Doctor's eyes.

"The Tardis is here to amplify the signal. It supplies a link to the teleporters to get us back to the warship when they are activated." The Doctor added.

"And they are activated by almost anything." River told the Doctor with the most confident smile. "I mean it my love. Try to start up the Tardis engines, switch on the lights in the control room, or even if you're just touching one tiny insigfinicant button on the console." She snapped her fingers. "You'll be back in your prison in an instant."

"Listening to you, I figured I have never truly left." The Doctor complained.

"It's for your own good." She straightened his tie affectionately. "Go find your Ood in the snow, and visit those wise men. Listen to their prophecy and use your clever head to find a way for us to help you."

"River." The Doctor grabbed her hand. A tiny spark went over when the wristbands touched. "Thank you." He told her sincerely.

River Song smiled sadly at him, then turned and walked away in the snow. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Donna Noble." She told the Doctor's companion as she activated her own wristband. "I hope to see you soon. Safe journey back." She disappeared in a flash of blue light.

"Come on then." The Doctor told the others. "No time to waste. We have to get to the frozen city. To the Ood elders. Now if I remember it correctly, it's that way." He pointed at a white hill that seemed not so different from the other snow-covered hills nearby. He walked a few paces, then hesitated and spun around to go in the opposite direction. "I know everything looks pretty much the same, but trust me, there's still plenty of landmarks to work with." The Doctor rambled as they started their journey through the snowy landscape.

"Doctor." Donna noted. "She didn't remember me."

"Who?" The Doctor asked, not really paying attention. He was too busy trying to figure out where the hell they were. It turned out that his sense of direction was a bit more rusty than he had thought.

"River Song. She didn't know who I was."

"Of course she doesn't. This is a younger version of her. She has not even met you yet."

"No I know that." She rolled her eyes in impatiently. "I mean the older one. The River we've met in the Great Library. She didn't know who I was. It doesn't make any sense. I've met her now, didn't I? The younger version of her should have remembered me."

The Doctor slowed down his pace, his mind turning fast. "Yes…That _is_ strange." He looked at her, eyes wide. "And you, you don't remember any of your dreams."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Donna asked, confused.

"Nothing." The Doctor muttered. "Nothing and everything. It could be a coincidence, but then again, what are the odds." He wheeled around, and started running.

"Is he always like that?" The UNIT soldier remarked, raising a puzzled brow.

"Doctor?! Doctor? What's going on?" Donna shouted, running after him.

"Don't know!" He yelled back as he plowed his way through the snow. "Going to find out!"

**7.**

As soon as River Song materialized in the central control room of the Judoon warship, she immediately requested a status report on Felix Grant.

"Mocking bird called while you were away, mam." One of the senior officers reported. "They have moved. Felix Grant is no longer located onboard of the Infinity flagship."

"Where did they go?" She asked leaning over his shoulder to get a good look at the information displayed on the numerous screens.

"Apparently, he has boarded the old UNIT airship, the Valiant. The latest breadcrumbs that mocking bird left us is pointing out its coordinates. At this moment, the Valiant is orbiting the Earth, flying over the northern hemisphere near Saint Petersburg, latitude 59°56′N, longitude 30°20′E. " He paused and gazed at River Song. "Are you all right mam?"

"The Valiant." River whispered, recalling how the Master's target was rescued out of the inferno. "What are they all doing on the Valiant?"

"Mam? Your orders?"

"Where is our fleet that we've sent out to collect Grant?"

"They're already on their way back. As soon as we knew that Grant had been translocated, I gave out the order to request their return. They are all within 2000 miles of the Earth's orbit, ready to strike at your command."

"Excellent captain." River told him. "That gives me 15 minutes to change."

"Mam?" The captain lifted his brows in cofusion.

"You don't expect me to pop over to the Valiant, just like this?" She commented with a witty grin. "At least let me grab a few more guns to go with this outfit."

"Of course, mam." The captain replied, and reopened the weapon storage for her.

**8.**

The ice cave looked exactly like he remembered from his last visit. The six Ood elders were sitting in a circle around the fire, joining hands while they shared their dreaming when the Doctor and his little gang wandered in.

"Ever thought of not doing this inside an ice cave?" The Doctor noted lightheartedly. "Seriously, a roaring fire and a ceiling made out of ice." He looked up at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling and grimaced when a drop of icewater dripped down on his neck. "Oh that was really unpleasant!" He complained, shivering. "Don't you get that all time when you just sit here, constantly? I mean, there are cave with stone ceilings on this planet."

"Doctor." Donna, whispered. "Shut up."

"Come sit with us Doctor." The eldest and wisest of the Ood elders told him. "Join us in the dreaming."

"You will join." The others repeated in a chant. "You will join. You will join."

The Doctor sat down in the circle. The two Oods next to him grabbed hold of his hands. "Just like the last time, nothing to panic about." He muttered to Donna who was following all this with a worried expression on her face.

"You came here to see the future." The eldest said. "Are you sure that you are prepared?"

"Yes, show me what you've shown River Song." The Doctor replied bravely.

"We cannot show you that."

"Why not? Oh come on, don't be daft. There is no need to be soft on me. Just give it to me straight, I can take it." He shut his eyes and braced himself.

"We cannot show you because that future has already passed. It no longer exists."

The Doctor opened one eye and peered at the Elder. "What?"

"The shapes of things to come are shifting, constantly moved by the events that took place so many years ago. What we have once seen was the end of all creation, the destruction of time itself, beyond that, there was only darkness."

"Yes. I know. I came here to prevent this from happening. So show me the future and let me think of a solution."

"You cannot help us Doctor."

"Of course I can. It's all I've ever done. Now stop talking like that, and show me my future!"

"Then I can only show you this day, Doctor."

"What? But that's rubbish! What kind of prophecy is this if you can only predict where I will be this evening or this late afternoon? You showed River Song far more than that!"

"There is nothing more to show you. Your time shall end. It will end, today."

"My time…" The Doctor froze when the cold grasp of fear got a hold on his hearts. "How will it happen? Show me!"

Violent images flooded into his mind. Donna, River, the Valiant and Felix Grant flashed before his mind's eye, before it slowed down to that one fated confrontation inside the Tardis, where the Doctor finally faced the Master.

"Doctor, what's happening? What do you see?" Donna asked, extremely anxious after catching a part of the Ood's prophesy, but the Doctor didn't respond.

"There can be no other outcome." The wise elder told him. "I am sorry Doctor."

"I see…" The Doctor muttered gravely, his face has turned white. "What happens after today? Show me."

The dreaming commenced. It took him to a nightmare future where time was disintegrating and all of the great civilizations in the universe lay in ashes. The fabric of reality was ripped apart, leaving a festering wound that allowed the dark swarms that lived in the cold void in between to crossover. The universe was now at the mercy of the demon army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres, and over this ruthless band, there ruled a vengeful and merciless Timelord god.

For the first time in his long, tired life, the Doctor was overcome with a deep sense of helplessness. Never had he given up before, not once, not even when all odds were stacked up against him. Now after being confronted by this horrific future, one that was inevitable, set in stone, he abandoned all hope. The whole of creation shall be left in the dark, screaming for mercy, but mercy would never come, for today, the Doctor's song will end.

As the Doctor stood amid the ruins of his beloved Earth overlooking the devastation, all that mindless hate and destruction, his hearts wept. _There is no point. _He thought. _Not in any of it. The dices have rolled and we have lost._

_We all have lost. _

_There is still hope Doctor. _The Oods whispered. _For even when Pandora's box is opened, there is still a last light remaining, shining in the darkness. Look again more closely, the answer lies safely hidden in the past._

His mind's eye transported him back to Saltsea, where on the night before the Master's regeneration, Donna woke up from a horrible dream. A dream that she could only half-remember.

_"It looked like him. It looked like the Nightmare Child…And I know him." She told him. Her eyes lit up with a shock of realization._

_"What? What is it?"_

_"That face." She told him in an unsteady voice. "That man in the mirror… I couldn't quite place him at first. It was as if he was in the wrong time and the wrong place, but now - now I do remember him. I am almost sure that it's really him." _

_She was tired and light-headed, drunk on the ominous prophesies that spilled out of her mouth in feverish ramblings.  
_

_ "Doctor, I know it sounds crazy, but you have to believe me, but I know that man, I've known him all my life. He's…He's…"_

"Donna." The Doctor whispered as his mind finally worked it all out while the last remnants of the memory passed. "She's the key. The last light that came out Pandora's box…And River couldn't remember her in the Library."

The Doctor's eyes snapped open. He immediately tore away from the circle. "Hate to be rude again, but I really have to go." He told the Oods, and grabbed Donna on his way out. "Thanks for showing me the light!" he shouted back over his shoulders.

"What's going on? Why are we leaving so quickly? Do you have a plan now?!" Donna asked as she ran along with him. They were followed by the two soldiers.

"I think I have a plan. Well, sort of plan. And guess what? It's not rubbish this time!" The Doctor told her with a mad smile on his face.

"Doctor, what did they show you? Why were they talking about your ending?"

"Did they? I didn't catch that part." The Doctor lied, and faked another broad smile. "You see I was trying very hard to concentrate on a new plan to make sure it wasn't rubbish. Can't think and listen on the same time. Most geniuses can't. Take Albert Einstein, the man was just horrible at listening and half of the time that I've met him he told me to shut up." He glanced over shoulder. "Are you two still following us?" He sounded annoyed.

"We're just following orders sir." The UNIT replied. "Professor Song wants you back on the ship after you've spoken to the Oods."

"Does she now." The Doctor replied. "And what if I refuse to go?"

"Then we activate your bracelet via remote control." The soldier said with his hand on his wristband, ready to push the button.

They were back where they've left the Tardis. The Doctor stood in front of the door with his hands in his pockets.

"You know what? Maybe you should. Anyway, let me pop inside for a sec to put my coat on. Don't know if any of you have noticed, but it's freezing out here." The Doctor hugged his arms around his chest and shivered to make his point.

"You've been outside for more then an hour dressed like that, and _now_ you're complaining?" Donna remarked.

The UNIT soldier was also not that easily fooled. "Like I said Doctor, the professor wants you back on the ship immediately after your visit. There is no need for you to grab your coat. We're leaving right now!"

"I take you're the one with the brains then. Funny I thought it would be the Judoon. They say you're often surprised by the silent ones, but in this case." The Doctor studied the Judoon's blank facial expression, and waved a hand in front of his beady eyes. "Nah, probably not."

"What are you doing?" Donna whispered to him. "You know you can't use the Tardis to escape. It's locked."

"I was just going to get my coat! Seriously why is that such a big deal?" The Doctor responded, faking being offended. He pulled open the Tardis doors and stepped inside under loud protest of the UNIT soldier. Donna was about to follow him when he stopped her.

"What?" Donna asked.

"You're not coming with me." The Doctor whispered to her.

"Why not?" She had long figured out that the Doctor wasn't only going back inside to grab a piece of clothing that he didn't need, but she didn't understand why she was not allowed inside the Tardis.

"Donna." He told her, glancing at the others. "Listen to me carefully. You must absolutely try to remember what I am about to whisper into your ear. It wouldn't make any sense to you now, but it will, after this day is over, you will remember him, and you'll know what you have to do. It is of the utmost importance."

"Oh my God." Donna gasped. "You're going to leave me behind."

"Because you're too important. I can't take you along. It's too risky. If something happens to you, that's it. It would be game over for all of us."

"You're going to die, aren't you? That ending that the Oods were talking about. It's your death!"

"Doctor! I warn you one last time, step out of the Tardis!" The UNIT soldier barked, and held his hand on the button of his remote.

"Remember me Donna Noble." The Doctor told her, and kissed her on her forehead. "And remember what I tell you now." He leaned closer to her. His voice was the softest of whispers, but she heard him, loud and clear. Then he pushed her back and shut the doors, leaving a very shocked and teary-eyed Donna standing outside in the snow.

"Doctor!" The UNIT soldier shouted. "You're not going anywhere!" He punched in the button and they all vanished in a bright blue flash.

**9.**

The first thing Donna sensed was the soft vibration of the engines under her feet. Then the bars of the stormcage materialized around her. She was back on the Judoon warship, and was once again safely locked up on the prison deck.

"I told you Doctor." The UNIT soldier said rather triumphantly at the other side of the bars. "Resistance is futile." His eyes grew wide when he noticed that Donna was the only one inside the stormcage. There was no sign of the Doctor or the Tardis.

"What happened?" He checked his wristband, but the system was still online and he couldn't find a flaw. "How is that possible?!"

"The Doctor has escaped." His Judoon colleague concluded, speaking out-loud for the first time.

"Yes." Donna muttered, a tear dripping down her chin. "Yes he did."

The UNIT soldier walked up to her and pointed a teaser gun at her chest. "He was talking to you. You must know where he went. Tell me!"

Donna calmly looked up at him. She was not the least intimidated. "Isn't that obvious?" She said quietly. "He went to save our lives."

_**TBC.**_

_**Just one more chapter left before this story ends! Please review and comment and the final chapter will be up next Saturday.**_


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9  
**

**1.**

The interior of the Valiant had not much changed since the days of the notorious Harold Saxon. The people of UNIT had done some minor refurbishing of the control room when the airship was still in their hands, and the cargo desk had been slightly expanded to carry more supplies and ammunition on board, but basically, if the Master would get on the ship now, he would have found his way around easily. River and her stealth squad of 15 didn't have that advantage. All they had was a tracking device that should locate their inside man and their supposed target.

"Where is he now?" River whispered to one of her men, as she peered around the corner, spotting two armed guards standing next to a closed off entrance.

"Inside that room." Her subordinate whispered back to her.

"Right. Remember, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." She pulled out her plasma gun. "On the count of three. One, two…"

She spun around the corner and opened fire, aiming not at the two men, but at the security cameras located above their heads. Her unit soon took care of the rest. As she stepped with her high heels over the unconscious bodies of the two Infinity guards, she bowed down to check their ID tags. "One private Benjamin and one lieutenant. Not much of a catch, but let's give senior a go." She signaled two of her men to pick the guard up and drag him to the retina scan. River then pulled the man's eyelids apart and let the security program do its job. To her surprise, the young lieutenant still had level three access, admitting them entrance to the closed room. When they stepped inside, they found a middle-aged man waiting in what seemed to be an intensive care isolation ward.

"So you are the famous mocking bird, our inside man?" River said with a cocky smile.

Van der Kamp let out a sigh of relief. "There you are! What took you so bloody long! I've been sending out signals for three days now. Can't you people not even locate a simple beta-wave scripted flare?"

"Well it would have helped if the information that you provided was not changing every minute." River replied with her hand resting on her hip.

"That's not my fault! It was Felix Grant himself who requested these transfers. That man is getting more and more paranoid each day. He thinks that the notorious Doctor is after him."

"I find that unexpectedly sensible for a mad scientist. At least _I_ would be scared if the Doctor went after _me_." She walked to the middle of the room. There was a hospital bed with a patient lying in it, hooked up to an elaborate life support system. Although his skin was covered in horrific burns from head to toe, she had no problem recognizing him. "That's the man the Master was after. What is he doing here?" She looked at van der Kamp. "Why did the Infinity Corporation pick him up out of the wreckage?"

"I have no idea. I came in here to find out more, just when you lot showed up. All I know is that they went through a lot of effort to keep him alive. All of his vital internal organs have been replaced at least twice, and still he's more dead than breathing." Van der Kamp counted the men that River had brought with her. "There are only ten of you. Is that all? The Shadow Proclamation had promised me that they would send in an army to catch Grant."

"And an army you shall get." River answered, looking over his shoulder, meaning that he should look behind. There was a large glass window that provided a view into outer space. Orbiting next to the Valiant were two massive warships, with a fleet of space-cruisers hovering around like a swarm of insects homing in on their target. Van der Kamp observed the impressive armada in awe, and for a moment was lost for words.

**2.**

In a different part of the Valiant, Felix Grant was just finishing the final step of the most important experiment of his life when a small army of Judoons and UNIT soliers led by a UNIT officer teleported into the laboratory. The four Infinity guards inside the room grabbed their guns but were immediately shot down. Realizing that they had lost their protection, the scientists working for Grant immediately raised their hands in the air. "You too, dr Grant." The UNIT captain told him, shoving a gun in his face. Instead of being threatened, Felix Grant just smiled coldly and picked up a syringe that contained a bright pink liquid from the bench. Before anyone could stop him, he stabbed the needle into his arm and injected himself with the suspicious content.

"Get that away from him!" The UNIT captain shouted, and 2 pairs of hands pulled Grant out of his chair and took the syringe from him. The needle broke and remained stuck in his skin. Grant convulsed, gasping in pain, he bended double and collapsed on the floor. "What's wrong with him?" One of the soldiers picked up the now empty syringe. "What did he inject himself with?" He stared at the mad scientist, who was foaming at the mouth and shaking violently, while his eyes rolled back into his skull.

"Get professor Song." The captain ordered, fearing that they might lose Grant. "Get her here now!"

As soon as he had given out the order, an explosion hit the airship, causing it the keel over to one side. "What's going in here?" The captain shouted, shielding his head from the glass bottles falling off the shelves. He grabbed his microphone. "Stop the attack!" He communicated back to central control, assuming that it was an airstrike carried out by the Shadow forces. "I repeat, stop immediately! There are still units operating inside the target vessel!" A second blast hit the ship and the ceiling broke down, collapsing on top of his men. "What are you doing you morons! Didn't you hear what I said? We are on the ship, stop trying to blow it up with us still on it!" The captain yelled, diving away from yet another explosion.

"Captain Hardy, it's not our missiles. We didn't launch anything at the Valiant!" Came the response from central control.

"Then who the hell is doing this?!" A final explosion hit the side of the ship to create a massive hole in the thick metal wall. Air rushed out in violent currents and those who couldn't grab hold on to anything solid in time was sucked out into the cold unforgiving space.

"For Christ's sake, if someone has already reached the control deck, let them lower the air shield immediately!" Hardy barked into his microphone. "I repeat, activate the air shield on the Valiant! We have a massive breach!" The captain was just able to wrap his fingers around the leg of an operation table that was bolted to floor. As he watched helplessly how half of his men disappeared through the hole, he thought that his fear had disintegrated his mind when he saw the reptilian head of a monstrous black dragon peek through the opening. Horrified, he then watched how it spread its jaws wide and breathed a ball of fire into the lab. As soon as it hit the flammable liquid inside the bottles on the benches, it exploded into a great destructive blaze. Through the smoke and the heated haze, he saw a man stepping out of the fire. He seemed to be immune to the flames and was untouched by the violent wind that had swept so many his men away. His eyes were burning with a deadly determination.

"Where is he?" The Master searched madly through the room just when someone succeeded in activating the air shield, closing barrier and making everyone drop back to the floor. He hoisted up man in a white coat to his eyelevel. "Where have you hidden him, tell me!" The Master roared, madly infuriated.

"W-who?" The man stuttered, too much in shock to answer coherently. Deciding that he was useless, the Master threw him out of the ship. He picked up another human at random. This time it was captain Hardy's turn. "Where is he!?" He repeated, shaking the captain savagely. "Tell me or I swear I shall tear this ship apart!"

"Honestly chap, I don't know what you're talking about." The captain answered, panicking. "Who are you looking for?"

An irritated scowl appeared on the Master's face. He was about to fling the captain out just like he had done with the unfortunate scientist, but then the captain's receiver came back to life. It was River Song, trying to make contact with the lost unit. "Captain Hardy, please report. We have received a signal of an unknown incoming object on your side of the ship. All units must withdraw and wait for back up, if you have captured Felix Grant take him to the deck 7, medical unit room 7311B. I repeat take Grant to 7311B. I think we have found that man that the Master was after. We'll be waiting for you there."

"Well what do you know?" The Master grinned. "Just in time to save your hide."

"You mean…you're going to let me live now?" The captain asked in hope.

The smile that the Master gave him was one that implied the opposite. "Show me who this Felix Grant is, and I shall reconsider it." He lied.

**3.**

River and her gang lowered their weapons when the door in room 7311B slid open and captain Hardy appeared in front of the entrance. "Captain, finally." River sighed. "Have you brought Grant with you?" Someone behind the captain pushed Felix Grant inside, and the scientist dropped on his knees in front of her.

"Is he wounded?" River asked, noticing his sweaty pale complexion and his shivering frame. "He looks really bad." She glanced up at the captain, and was shocked to see that a crimson cascade of blood flowed out of his mouth. Horrified, she backed away. "Captain? Captain?!"

"Professor Song." The captain gargled, spitting more blood out as he tried to speak her name. In a distorted zombie-like movement, he performed a salute to her before he collapsed on the floor, revealing a dark shadow that had remained until now hidden behind him.

"Oh my God." Van der Kamp gasped, his face turned as white as a sheet and he moved away from the door. "Who did this?"

River's blood turned cold the minute she recognized that deranged laughter that echoed from the outside corridor into the room.

"I know who you are. Show yourself!" She shouted, aiming her plasmagun at the entrance. The Master stepped inside the ward, his lips curled into a cruel grin as he tossed the part of the cortex that he had pulled out of the UNIT officer's mouth at her. It landed in front of her feet like a formless grey blob. "Gotcha!" He smiled. "Oh you should have seen your face, it was absolutely priceless!"

"You monster." She told him as she eyed him judgingly. "You've turned him into vegetable."

"Oh don't flatter the captain too much. There was hardly any activity up there to start with." The Master smirked. "Such a responsible, dull little man. I doubt if his lovely wife is ever going to notice the difference." His eyes lit up when he saw the patient. "Right." He muttered, straightening his collar. "Where were we?" With lightening speed he came over and hauled the patient out of the hospital bed to drag him into a corner. "Oh yes. I was burning you." A crazy smile appeared on his face. "Shall we proceed?"

"Let him go!" River tried, holding her gun and ready to fire. Her men copied her actions and suddenly there were 16 barrels aimed at him.

"Oh please. Do you even know who he is?" The Master snorted.

"I don't, but I would be one lousy human being if I let you continue to torture this poor man." River responded. She felt her heart rattle inside her chest when she saw the deadly red glow intensifying in his left hand. She was about to fire to prevent him from harming her men when a familiar noise blazed through the air.

"What is that?" One of her soldiers remarked.

The Master rolled his eyes when he recognized the peculiar sound. "Honestly now, stop it!" He complained. "Every single time!"

The Tardis materialized in the middle of the white washed room and the Doctor dashed out in such haste that he hit his knee on the frame of the hospital bed.

"Doctor!" River Song uttered in absolutely shock. "How did you get here? Those wristbands were locked on the stormcage!"

"No." The Doctor replied, hopping on one foot as he tried to absorb the pain. "It was locked onto you. I made sure of that. Remember when we touched? A tiny little zap was enough to imprint the teleporter with your biological signature. Once I had that, it was just easy, easy-peasy to transfer the information to the Tardis."

"Oh why do you have to be so stubborn!" River raged. "Leave! Leave immediately Doctor, or you're going to get killed!"

"All right, all right, calm down." The Doctor replied, knitting his brows. "You don't have to threaten me with murder. I didn't know that showing up here would upset you so much."

"Not me." River shut her eyes and sighed. "And not metaphorically speaking."

"Doctor!"

"Yes?" The Doctor swirled around and finally noticed the Master. "Ah, it's you." He glanced over at River who gave him a very anxious look. "Very good." The Doctor muttered, trying to sound calm. "No reason to panic of course. Somehow I must have kinda expected that I would find you here."

"In case you haven't noticed." The Master sighed. "I am extremely bored now, so can you just SHUT UP!"

The Doctor approached him slowly. "You don't look well." He commented, noticing the look on his face. "Well, you look better then when I met you before. More human at least, but if you don't mind me mentioning it, there is lot of crazy going on in your eyes."

"Thank you for your most insightful diagnosis, Doctor." The Master deadpanned, returning him a cheerless grin. "Anne is dead. I've lost her." He added in a bitter voice.

"I am sorry." The Doctor replied, immediately alarmed.

"No need to. I am quite over it already." He giggled madly. "Perhaps you're right. I am not the type of man to settle down. Now that my marriage is accidentally over, it just leaves me more time to spend on my hobbies." He remarked with a savage glint in his eyes. "I was about to peel this man's skin off till there is nothing left but a screaming bloody mess. Care to join me?"

"Master." The Doctor spoke to him, cautious and fully aware of his fragile state of mind. "If Anne died, what happened to Rassilon?"

The Master shut his eyes and turned to him slowly. "Do you really want to know?" He asked with a sad maniacal grin.

"Who's this man?" The Doctor noticed the horrific burns on the man's skin. There was not one spot on him that had been spared from the scorching heat. It was obvious that he must have suffered immensely. "You've transferred Rassilon's mind into another human." The Doctor concluded, appalled by the discovery.

"Yes, and I tortured the hell out of him." The Master replied with a most deranged and deeply satisfied smile. "Still, I am not done with him yet." He tightened his grip on his victim.

If the Doctor was already in a state of heightened anxiety, it only became much worse when he let his eyes fall on Alex Grant. The scientist was struggling to breathe, coughing up pink slime from his lungs, and clutched onto his stomach as pangs of pain assaulted him.

"Who brought Grant in here?" The Doctor asked in a controlled voice, trying to hide his panic.

Grant crawled back up, sweat trickling down his face. "Hello Doctor." He managed to say, before he gazed at the Master. "You're both here. How wonderful." He threw his head back and started to laugh manically.

"Why are you laughing?" The Master hissed. "Is there is something funny perhaps?"

"Nothing…I was…just rejoicing." Grant breathed, heaving forward and spitting out another mouthful of pink slime. "Oh do carry on."

"Oh he has lost it." Van der Kamp muttered as he observed the state of his former colleague from a safe distance, then their attention on Grant was distracted by a piercing cry. The Master was ripping strips of blackened skin from his victim's body, skinning him alive. As Rassilon struggled and suffered, a golden glow started to flow out of his mouth and entered the Master through this eyes, the windows of his soul.

"Master! No!" The Doctor cried out. "I beg you! Stop!" River, realizing that the Master was absorbing Rassilon's essence, took aim and fired. Her squadron followed her example, and soon a blizzard of deadly plasma-beams exploded inside the ward. The Doctor dived behind the hospital bed. Throughout this mad chaotic violence, he could hear Grant continue to laugh insanely.

"Kill him!" Grant shouted, encouraging the Master to even more brutality. "What are you waiting for Timelord? Take your revenge and end his miserable life!" Warning bells went off inside the Doctor's head. "The syringe." He whispered, shocked by the realization. "Grant, he took my blood during my fall!"

"Don't!" He yelled, as he jumped up and ran across the firing line, desperate to stop him. "Don't kill Rassilon! Felix Grant used my blood to complete the Timelord DNA sequence and has injected himself with it! You can't let Rassilon die! He's got a brand new body waiting for him right here!"

But the Doctor's warnings came too far late.

Rassilon cast out his final breath in Robert's ruined mortal body, and his essence was evicted in a violent explosion that blasted both the Master and the Doctor off their feet. It created a massive swirling ball of energy that spun in the air, as bright as a miniature sun, flashing out deadly bolts. While all the others dived for cover, Grant struggled back on his feet and stumbled towards the fireball, his arms spread out in receptive anticipation. He cried up to the sky as Rassilon's lifeforce entered, welcoming his lord and master into this new Timelord vessel of flesh and blood while the fires consumed him.

The Doctor saw how the Master crawled back up and shot a beam at Grant in the hope to stop the transformation. It back-fired and hit the Master in his chest. He fell to ground, panting heavily as he gazed up at the Doctor, who scrambled back up to warn the others. "Stop! Stop shooting! He's got a reversion shield!"

The mad firing finally ceased. As the dust settled they all saw Grant, standing amid the ruins, his body unharmed and emitting a golden glow, while his eyes now housed an ancient and dark soul.

"My lord Doctor." Rassilon spoke in Grant's voice. "And my lord Master. I must be blessed that you both are here to witness my resurrection…and your destruction."

"Not if I got anything to say about it." River said, placing herself in front of the Doctor. "Take a look through that window Rassilon. There is complete warfleet out there, gathered here to fight you. In name of the Shadow Proclamation of the 14 united intergalactic planetations, I place you under arrest."

"You pathetic little human." Rassilon laughed in amusement. "Your primitive warships and weapons are useless against me." To demonstrate his great contempt, he swept his hand over the warfleet. "You are nothing. I can see through the whole of time and space, and manipulate them by my will alone."

The battleships started to disintegrate. The entire fleet disappeared in front of River's eyes within seconds, dissolving into golden sand-like particles and into oblivion. Then to River's horror, Rassilon turned his fury on her soldiers. "I see every atom inside your bodies and I split them!" Rassilon opened his hand and the men literally fell apart. Their clothes and weapons dropped to the floor where have stood with piles of human ash in the middle. When he was about to turn on her the Doctor intervened. "Stop!" He yelled, and pushed forward. "It's me you want. Let her go."

"You Doctor have done me a great wrong. Your punishment shall be severe, but there is another insolent child of Gallifrey who is even more deserving of my wrath."

"No! Don't you dare to harm him!" He threatened even more strongly than before.

"Get out of my way." The Master said, almost resentfully. "I am not one of your useless human companions. I can fight my own battles against that condescending vicious bastard!" He shot out another bolt from his hand, which Rassilon absorbed without causing him any visible harm. Frustrated, the Master fired a second bolt, followed by another, and another, and another, but all of them failed to injure the conceited Timelord, who regarded all of his desperate efforts with malevolent glee. Weakened and struggling to remain standing from his injuries, the Master finally gave up, landing on his hands and knees in front of his hated foe.

"Are you done, lord Master?" Rassilon grinned devilishly. "MY turn." He raised his hand and started to draw out the powers that the Master had absorbed from him and Omega, sucking the life-force out of his victim like a ferocious vampire bat. When he was done, he rubbed in his hands and formed a bolt of savage energy that he fired at the Master, sending him crashing into the wall.

Lying face down on the ground and seriously wounded, the Master still pushed himself up to try a second aim at Rassilon. A weak glow ignited in his palm, the last remnant of that celestial light that he had stolen from Omega. He was so very determined to fight back until his last breath, but then he coughed up blood, and the light in his hand died out before he could fire another shot.

"You want to take my life?" Rassilon laughed, coming towards his defeated enemy and spreading out his arms. "Here I was, standing before you trapped in that disgusting weak mortal form. All you had to do was to extend your hand and take it from me…and yet you failed. How pathetic! Now that I am reborn a Timelord god, how much chance do you think you still have?"

The Master grunted, tasting blood in his throat. Sprawled out over the floor, he was still trying to put all of his remaining life energy into one last shot at Rassilon. His hand rose weakly.

"Enough of this worm." Rassilon shot a red beam at him from his hand. It formed an energy field around the fallen Timelord that tormented him by pulling every fiber inside his body apart, making him scream in pure agony.

The Doctor watched all this in horror. "Don't do this to him! Stop it! Stop it now!"

Rassilon laughed as he continued to make the Master suffer, turning up the energy field from a bright red glow into a hellish flare. "Look at that. The Doctor still cares, even after you betrayed him. How very touching."

The ship suddenly keeled over to one side as if struck by a massive object. The Doctor, who was facing Rassilon, saw leathery wing sweep pass the wall-sized cabin-window, followed by an ink-black arrow shaped tail.

"Is that really what I think it is?" River whispered to the Doctor, eyes-wide in astonishment.

Behind Rassilon, a giant reptilian head appeared, staring inside through the glass window with one blood-red eye.

The Doctor's breath caught in his lungs. "No." He muttered, knowing what the Master had summoned in his desperation. "No don't!"

The black dragon inhaled deeply and expelled a blazing ball of fire The intense heat melted a whole in the window like it was but a wall of ice. Rassilon spun around, only to witness the deadly fireball rolling towards him, incinerating all that was in its path, before he was hit by the destructive blaze.

Despite his suffering, there was only one thought running through the Master's mind_. Please, I don't care what will happen to me. Just let him die._

His hopes evaporated when the flames died down, revealing Rassilon, standing tall and arrogant in a circle of blackened metal and smoldering ash. Like a phoenix born out of fire, the vengeful Timelord had remained untouched by the inferno.

Loyal to her Master to the bitter end, the dragon stuck her head inside the cabin. It struck with serpent-like speed at her lord's enemy in an attempt to devour him, but Rassilon stopped her by sweeping a net of blue plasma energy over the giant reptile's head. Caught inside the crackling matrix, she roared and fought savagely, but it only further tightened her bonds, making her resistance completely futile.

"The Master's Tardis!" Rassilon exclaimed triumphantly. "And the Doctor's." He added, staring at the blue box with eyes glistening with greed. "The last two in existence. Now both are mine, with in each a beating living heart made out of fragments of the timevortex itself." He came closer to the captive dragon, his eyes calculative, an old wolf contemplating his next strategy. "Oh fortunate fate! With that I shall ascend to glory!" He exclaimed with delight.

The Doctor's hearts froze as he finally understood what Rassilon had in mind. He patted down his coat to find the white-point star. It was tucked away in his left pocket but when he closed his fingers around it the little star suddenly turned white hot, burning his hand.

"Are you searching for this?" Rassilon held up the star for him to see. "How foolish of you to believe that this could aid you in your quest. These precious artifacts were created by me, lord Doctor, and they will answer to me alone. Every path the white-point star has led you was to benefit my resurrection. Even when it guided you to that doomed prison of your mad friend it was only abiding my will."

"I don't understand. What's going on Doctor, tell me!" River asked fearfully, noticing the look of horror on his face.

"He's going to raise an army." The Doctor replied.

"What army? He already got a massive army! Half of the Earth's global defense system belongs to the Infinity Corporation that worships him!"

"These sickening humans?" Rassilon sneered loathsomely. "Not even one in a billion of them are fit to be called a true warrior. Humankind is not commendable of my leadership. They are slaves, and they shall kneel before their new vengeful god, just like the rest of the universe. The time of chaos and perversions has ended, the Timelords shall return and a new Gallifreyian empire shall rise! For that I shall need a great army that is worthy of my glory."

"The dark warriors of the Nightmare Child." The Doctor breathed out, frustrated and furious. "The demon army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres that was banished into the void with the destruction of Gallifrey."

Rassilon returned him a cold triumphant smile. "A most effective machine of war, not led by a diseased outcast, a shameful shadow of our race, but by a strategic mastermind to prove to our enemies the true magnificent of the Timelords."

He held up the white-point star and turned to the battered window. Between his fingers the crystal structure started to glow. "To the beginning of a Timelord empire that shall last for a million years." He stated and threw the star away, blasting it through what remained of the glass into outer space.

"The creation of this new nation shall require a great sacrifice." He aimed his hand at the wounded Master, moving him towards the captured dragon, and with his other he forced open the maul of the beast. "The beating heart of a living Tardis…And a sacrifice in blood." Rassilon's eyes were glinting with cruelty as he flung the Master into the waiting mouth of his Tardis.

"No!" The Doctor shouted as River held him back. "Stop it Rassilon! Stop this madness! If you punch a hole in the fabric of the universe to let your murderous hordes out, the force that is needed to create such a gateway into the void will rip right through our universe! It will destroy us all!"

"Such lack of faith in the abilities of a god. Care for a riddle, Doctor?" Rassilon taunted him mercilessly. "How does one kill a man who cannot die?" He forced the beast to lock her jaws, trapping the Master inside.

"Please, don't!" The Doctor shouted. "NO!"

A fierce bolt of energy came from Rassilon's hand and the black dragon was thrust backwards, following the track of the white point star into the blackness of space. Pushed beyond physical laws by Rassilon's powers, the star breached the fabric of the universe when it surpassed the speed of light near the galaxy of the Lonely Wolf, creating a massive black hole that entrapped the nearby stars and planets. The Master's Tardis was hurled towards it, and disappeared into the chaotic violence that swarmed around the core.

"Why did you do that?!" The Doctor demanded to know, infuriated. "He was no threat to you!" He shook his head in disillusionment and deep contempt. "How could you do this to him? He is a Timelord. One of us. Our blood runs through his veins! You speak of bringing glory to our people. Well hear this, except for us, there is nothing left of the Timelords!"

"Then I will create us anew, a better and stronger Timelord race, but first, I shall undo our mistakes." A sinister glow ignited in Rassilon's hands. The Doctor stood his ground and breathed heavily as the light intensified. Slowly, Rassilon took his aim at him.

Before the deadly bolt could be released from Rassilon's hand, a shot was fired from River's gun. Still regenerating and immune to the plasma beam, it only distracted Rassilon's attention for a fracture of a second, but that was all that was needed to safe the Doctor's life. Prof. van der Kamp suddenly appeared behind the deadly Timelord. "Run Doctor! Run for your life!" Van der Kamp shouted as he plunged a dagger that he scavenged from a fallen Judoon soldier into Rassilon's back. Where the blade sliced into the body, instead of blood, a brilliant blue light spilled out.

"That's Mockingbird." River muttered with admiration.

"No, that's professor George van der Kamp." The Doctor said, grateful for the man's courage and fearful for his fate. Rassilon screamed in rage, and with the dagger still lodged in his back, he turned around to face his attacker. The blue beams erupting from the wound fanned out like wings made out of angry electric currents. "George." Rassilon spoke in his own and in Felix Grant's voice. "You spineless coward. How dare you to rise against me?!"

"River." The Doctor pinched in her hand to break her gaze from the fearsome scene. "You have to go."

"No." She whispered, grabbing his hand and holding it tight. "Not without you I won't!"

"You have to! Use the teleporter. I've set it on the planet of the Oods. You'll be safe there."

"No! I won't go!" She answered.

"Don't be so stubborn. There is no time! Listen to me!" He pulled her close and whispered into her ear. "I have a plan." He showed her his wristband. "We're still linked you and I." He reassured her. "Just go first. When you arrive count back from 1000, then activate your remote control."

"That will be too far away for the retrieval signal to reach you!"

"No it won't be." The Doctor said, pointing at the Tardis. "The Tardis is also bio-locked on you."

An icy scream came from van der Kamp. The Doctor and River both watched in horror how the blue beams sprouting from Rassilon's back came down on the poor man like a ferocious nest of vipers from Medusa's hair, and electrocuted him.

The Doctor stared her right into the eyes. "Get out of here River Song." He said determinedly. "Save yourself, so you can save me." Before River could object, he grabbed hold of her hand and activated the teleport for her, summoning a bright flash that carried her to safety.

"Doctor!" Rassilon raged as he dropped the lifeless charred body of van der Kamp on the ground and trampled him, pulverizing the blackened skull beneath his feet. He released a deadly bolt, and the Doctor made a mad dash for the Tardis and managed to dive through the door before the entire cabin exploded behind him. The violence of the blast blew the doors shut. Scrambling back up, he immediately ran over to the console and fired up the engines.

"Doctor!" Rassilon screamed from the top of his lungs, as the Tardis stared to dematerialize. "Where are you going Doctor!? You cannot run! You cannot stop me! You hear me? You cannot stop me!"

**4.**

Everything was lost.

The Master staggered repeatedly from the console to the locked door and back again. Gone was his usual mad but well-controlled manner, now there was panic in his eyes, and raw fear paralyzed his actions. He tried to regain rein over his Tardis, but all the steering-controls were destroyed by Rassilon. He was trapped like a rat in a cage, hurling through a black hole on a collision course with the singularity that lies in its core. When the Tardis and the singularity was to collide, the violent energy released by that impact would rip a hole into the universe, massive enough to sustain a portal into the void in between dimensions to let the nightmare army out. The only consolation that the Master would have, was that by the time these ruthless destructive hordes would descend upon all of creation, he would have long since been smashed into atoms and blown away by the solar winds.

"It's no use!" He screamed, and banged his fists on the monitor when the bright red FAILURE warnings kept flashing on the screen. A sharp pain ripped through him. His injuries and the recent drain on his life-force had left his body in ruin. Lowering himself on the floor with his back against the console, he grimaced in agony. _It all has been for nothing._ He thought, embittered by his defeat and imminent demise. _The Doctor should have left me rot in my prison. He should have abandoned me there to be tormented for eternity. I was an arrogant fool to believe that I could harness Omega's powers to stand against Rassilon. He has been in complete control of my life since I was a child. I should have realized that I would never be able to change my fate._

Just when he had lost all hope, the familiar sound of the Tardis came to him, and the blue policebox materialized in the control room, right before his eyes.

The door swept open and the Doctor peeked his head around the corner. "Ah, there you are!" He scanned the Master from head to toe and let out a sigh. "Nothing too serious I see. You really got me worried."

The Master gazed at the Doctor as if he was a white rabbit that had just jumped out of a magician's hat. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I am saving you. As usual. Actually it seems to be the only thing I am doing lately. I have hardly any time for anything else." The Doctor rushed out of the Tardis carrying a thick cable under his arm. He turned to the Master. "Are you going to help me or are you just going to sit here continue to feel incredibly sorry for yourself?"

The Master stood back up, ignoring the pain that shot up his spine. "From all the stupid things that you have ever done, this must be the most stupidest of all!" He raged, truly angered by the Doctor's reckless behavior. "Following me down here in a blackhole?! What were you thinking?! That's bloody suicide!"

"Yep. Don't tell me that you don't appreciate it." The Doctor replied as he connected the cable to the console of the Master's Tardis. "We have to blow her up before she hits singularity."

"What?! You want to sacrifice my own Tardis?" The idea completely went against his egocentric nature and he found it absolutely appalling.

"Listen." The Doctor told him more sternly this time. "Rassilon is too arrogant and too proud to realize that he is meddling with forces beyond his control. There won't be a neat little hole for his precious army to emerge, there will a massive crack in the universe that will spread and spread till the entire fabric is affected. Reality will disintegrate! We cannot let that happen!"

The Master gazed back at the Doctor for a second. It was as if a veil was finally lifted from in front of his eyes. "What can I do?" He agreed in a soft voice.

A smile spread over the Doctor's lips. "Get the engines of my Tardis running. If we wake her up with a spark from another living Tardis we might get the core working again. I really need that energy stored inside the heart to fuel the explosion."

For once in his life, the Master just did what he was told and rushed inside the blue box. Within a few seconds, the engines of the Doctor's Tardis were activated and supplied eons of energy to the heart of her dormant sister.

"I need more power!" The Doctor shouted to him from outside.

Inside the control room of the Doctor's Tardis, the Master quickly typed in the sequence of codes that was needed to increase the output of the engines. "Doctor?" The Master yelled back. "How are we going to get out of here? We can't fly your Tardis against the gravitational pull of a black hole."

"Don't worry! Already taken care, courtesy to River Song. She's going to supply us with a lifeline in about…" He stopped working and checked his wristband. "600 seconds! Blimey, time does fly by when you struggle to turn something as innocent as a dashboard console into a bomb."

"Doctor!"

"I know, I know, stop ranting and get on with it." The Doctor stuck his head back under the dashboard where he had been busy rewiring the circuits.

"No." The Master shook his head. "I have something to tell you. I need you to listen." He paused, hesitant to confess his shameful secrets to him. "Remember our last encounter? After I left you on that bridge. I was so confused...and...and angry. I went on a killing spree. Massacred a group of people on a bus. They have never harmed or threatened me in any way. Well at least most of them haven't. I didn't even know their names. Still…I murdered them all in cold blood." He stopped, waiting for the Doctor's condemnations, but it remained silent at the other side. "And then there was Cathy. Cathy Summerfield." Cathy's tearstained face appeared in front of his mind's eye and he straightened his jaw. "After I found Anne I needed a place in time where I could hide her and keep her safe. So I took the parents from that human girl, and placed Anne in her care as her sister. I ruined that young girl's life…because I needed Anne…because I was afraid to be alone..." He broke off and recalled the way Cathy had looked at him, so unforgiving and full of hatred when he told her the truth. "I've created a monster." He blurted out, his voice breaking. "I took her innocence from her, just like Rassilon had once robbed me of mine." He pressed his lips tightly into a thin white line and fought against his tears. "Oh Doctor…what have I become?"

A spark lit up the room outside, and the roar of the Master's Tardis engines broke the burdened silence. The Doctor reappeared in the doorway, his expression was grim.

"The core is working again." He told the Master while he rolled up the unplugged cable and tossed it back inside. "The circuits are set, and will initiate the auto-destruction sequence in 150 seconds." He gazed at him. "What do you want me to say?" He asked softly.

"A sad smile broke through the Master's tears. "That you want me to get the hell out of your Tardis." He answered truthfully.

The Doctor shook his head slowly. "You know what I am going to say to you." He told him determinedly.

The Master swallowed hard, and pushed out a deep breath. The Doctor just looked at him, his eyes shining with tremendous kindness. There was no need for words. All that needed to be said, was already understood.

The Master's Tardis suddenly started to rock violently. It was followed by an explosion in the control room that made Doctor dive for cover. "We're approaching the core!" The Master yelled out. "Quickly now. Get inside. We have to leave!"

The Doctor leaped forward, but just when he was about to get inside the Tardis, the doors slammed shut, leaving him stranded. Alarmed, the Master ran over and tried to open it. "It's locked!" He yelled in panic to the Doctor. "Why is it locked?" He pulled and rattled the handles with all his might. When that failed, he started to kick at the doors. "Keys!" He remembered. "Doctor?! Where is the Tardis key?"

"I don't know. I don't have it." The Doctor breathed in heavily and took a few steps back to look at the Tardis. The light on top of the blue box started to glow.

Realizing that the key must be left somewhere inside, the Master went around in a frantic search. "Where is that bloody thing?!" There was no sign of it, even when he trashed the place, leaving a trail of chaos behind. "How many times did I tell you, you have to get organized!" The Master shouted out as he threw his hands in the air in desperation. Then his eyes caught the glint of metal between the messy wiring of the circuit board. "Gotya!" He breathed in relief and hurried back to the doors to stick the key in the lock.

It refused to turn.

"What the hell is going on?!" In his panic, he forced it, and the key broke in half, leaving the top part lodged inside. Frustrated, he banged his fists on the wooden panel.

"Master!" The Doctor shouted from the other side. "Stop trying. It's no use."

"No I won't! Not until you're back in here, right where you belong." He ran up to the doors and slammed his shoulder against the wood.

"You can't force it open! These doors were made by Valerian monks. They can even withstand the blast from a supernova. You can bash them all you like but they won't give." The Doctor shouted, staring anxiously at the Master's silhouette behind the frosted window of the Tardis.

The Master refused to give up on his friend. "This is all Rassilon's doings!" He huffed as he kept banging his shoulder against the panel.

"No, no it's not him. It's the Tardis." As he said it, the Doctor felt a strange calm descend upon him, a strange serenity that made him forget about his own fears. "She is trying to tell me something."

"She's an ungrateful venomous whore if she wants to leave her master behind!"

"No…No you don't understand. I've traveled with her for so long. She knows me like no one else. She always knows where I should be, and what I ought to do." The Doctor took in a deep breath. This was what the Oods had prepared him for. This was his final moment facing the Master. As the full realization of how his end will play out finally came to him, he was overwhelmed by a great sense of reprieve, as if a great weight was lifted from his shoulders. He glanced down at his wristband. Only 20 seconds left before the bomb would detonate. "Koshei, please listen to me, stop trying."

"No I can't!" The Master yelled back stubbornly. "I can't just leave you here to die!"

"We all have to live with the hand we're dealt with." The Doctor placed his hand on the wood, trying to calm him by his presence. "The thing is, when I first heard the Ood elders speak of my ending, I though it would be you. I am so grateful that it isn't." He paused in an effort to compose himself. "So it's all right. It really is."

At the other side of the door, the Master sunk through his knees and rested his head against the timber. "I could never..." The Master bit on his lower lip, swallowing the much-hated word. "How could I?" He whispered ruefully. "After all that we've been through together."

"I know." A smile broke through his sadness. "And I have always considered that one of your most endearing traits."

"Theta, you can't die." The Master whispered, on the verge of tears. "This universe needs you. It needs the Doctor to set things right. It doesn't need me." He paused while his hearts filled with guilt and regrets. "I should be me on the other side of this door."

"Don't be ridiculous, of course it needs you, and it will need you more than ever now it's missing this silly Timelord crusader." A shockwave went through the control room, sending pieces of the ceiling raining down on the Doctor. The metal grid under his feet shook savagely as the Master's Tardis reached its final destination. The Doctor glanced at his wristband, and noted that the counter was down to the last few precious seconds.

"Time is running out! Listen, I know that you are scared. I know that you don't believe that anything will ever be right again, but it will. I promise. Don't give up. Stand up Koshei. Fight him. Fight Rassilon. I will be there, right by your side, fighting with you all along. Just promise me this."

Tears were streaming down the Master's face. "What?" He asked in a choked up voice.

The Doctor was about to tell him when the counter reached zero and the blue police-box started to fade away. There was a metallic click and the bomb inside the Tardis core detonated, releasing an amount of energy that was even greater than that of a million suns. It blasted everything inside the control room into atoms and ripped the Master's Tardis apart, just seconds before it was to smash into the singular core of the black hole.

Outside of the black hole, the countless galaxies in the universe continued to turn, the planets sustained their peaceful orbits in their own solar-systems, and all the stars shone as brightly as ever…but the Doctor was no more.

**5.**

River had impatiently counted down to zero before she activated the remote control. When she did, an arrow of fire appeared and burnt through the Ood planet's stratosphere. As she followed the bright line that crossed the snow-white sky, it struck her that the familiar sound of the Tardis engines was replaced by a high-pitched screeching like that of an incoming shell.

The impact happened behind a snow dune out her of direct view and blasted tons of rock and snow into the sky. When it rained back down to the surface, River noticed that it was mixed with a grey ash-like substance. Running now through the thick layer of snow to get to the crash-site, she could feel her stomach tighten into a knot when she saw the pieces of the Doctor's beloved blue box, lying scattered over the ground. The heat released by the impact had created a crater that had melted all the way down into permafrost layer. At the very bottom, in the mud that was created by the melted ice water, she found what was left of the Tardis. The innards of the great machine were spilled inside out, with the decor of the 100 and more rooms lying in total ruins. Anxious, River immediately climbed down the side and searched amid the devastation. As if by a miracle, she recovered a part of the Doctor's wristband. It was partially scorched, but the black box recorder was still intact. She retrieved the information, using the Doctor's biological footprint to activate the device.

Her heart froze when it coldly stated that the organism to which it was bio-locked, was now deceased.

Unable to accept this horrible news, River continued to search frantically through the wreckage. She finally uncovered a body, half buried under the collapsed console platform. A leg, crushed under the ironwork stuck out in the snow and mud. She immediately began to remove the debris, expecting that it would be the Doctor.

Instead, she found the Master.

He was heavily injured. Half of his skin was scorched off, both his legs were crushed and there were countless cuts on his face and body, but he was still breathing. The Master was still alive.

River sucked in a ragged breath and covered her mouth to stifle a cry.

The horrible prophesy had finally come true.

There was no doubt in her mind who was to blame for the Doctor's demise. Fighting her tears, she stood up straight and inhaled deeply, then she took her plasma gun out of the holster and aimed it at the Master who was lying at her feet. He was still unconscious. Torn up inside by an overwhelming grief, and eager to avenge the Doctor, she would have shot him then and there if it wasn't for a sudden rise of cold wind that blew the snow and ash into the air. Through a haze of crystalline white, she saw a figure, standing on top of the crater, calmly looking down and observing her actions.

"An Ood." River muttered, remembering what the Doctor had said. "An Ood in the Snow."

Ood Sigma cocked his head to one side. The sphere in his hand shone brightly, a beacon of light in the white blizzard that surrounded them both. "Why do you want to do this, River Song?"

"Because he deserves it." She answered with strong conviction.

"But the Master cannot die."

"That may be so, but I have enough plasma ammunition in this gun to blast him into atoms." She said, activating her weapon with a loud click. "If he still lives after this then it certainly would not be an enjoyable life."

"You long for retribution?"

"Well isn't that bloody obvious?!" She sneered back, furious about the quivering quality of her own voice. "And don't you dare to tell me that I should spare him. I won't know one good reason why."

"The Doctor, he would not have wanted this."

"No, but he isn't here anymore, is he?!" She finally broke down. A flow of tears welled up in her eyes. "For God's sake, can't you understand this? It hurts! Don't the Oods know grief? He's gone forever, and it just breaks my heart…it hurts so much!" She sobs loudly. Her gun was trembling in her hand.

Ood Sigma just gazed at her, appearing wise and serene, untouched by her heartbreak. He turned to the western sky where the burning Tardis had first appeared. Snowflakes swept into squid-like face, and covered his tentacles with a thin layer of frost. "Darkness is coming." He whispered.

"Yes." River answered bitterly. "And the Doctor is no longer here to protect us, so may fate have mercy on us all."

"We all need that last light that remains of the Doctor, River Song. We all need it to fight the oncoming darkness."

Finally realizing what Ood Sigma was trying to tell her, River lowered her gun. "What exactly did your Elders show the Doctor?" She demanded to know. "Show me."

**6.**

He woke up to the sound of machines, beeping, wheezing, and tapping.

He was surrounded by them. He needed them to breathe. He needed them to keep his two hearts going. He needed them to replenish his dehydrated system with vital liquids. His body was broken, and could no longer accomplish these simple tasks by its own. Frightened and disorientated, and in his mind, still trapped inside the hellish inferno of the Tardis during the crash, he opened his mouth to scream, but his throat was parched and his lungs were burnt to crisp. The only sound that came from him was an agonized whimper.

Then he realized that he was no longer in his fiery hell, but was lying tied down to a hospital cot in a strange, sterile room. His arms were fixed inside a straightjacket, and he could not move his lower half without causing himself insufferable agony. His legs were smashed, and although he could not check the injuries sustained by the upper half of his body, he knew that he had dislodged his shoulder when he tried to unlock the Tardis doors. It was only when he attempted to turn sideways that he noticed that his head was contained inside a cage-structure, with metal plates screwed tight against his skull to keep him fixed in one position. Panicking, he tilted his head back as far as the metal fixtures allowed him in order to observe the room. Above his head hung an IV bag with a bright green liquid, feeding heavy narcotics directly into his bi-circulatory system. A slender hand reached for it from outside his view to adjust the drip. He opened and closed his mouth, trying to speak, just when the owner of the hand revealed herself. River loomed over him. Her face showed very little sympathy for his plight.

"It's no use. With those injuries, you won't be able to do any of that any time soon. Still, compared to my husband, you are so very lucky." River told him with a sharp bitterness in her voice.

"I have never understood why you mean so much to him. My brilliant, impossible Doctor." She smiled fondly at his memory. "He could have achieved so much. He could have done so many more amazing and wonderful things, risen to such dazzling heights...But not anymore." She gazed down at him with nothing but deep loathing and contempt. "The Doctor is gone. He chose to sacrifice his own life to save that of yours, a miserable coward, a shadow of man who is not even worthy of speaking the good Doctor's name." She leaned closer to him. He could feel her breath sting the open wounds on his ruined face. "Tell me then. What is your secret? How did you trick the greatest and kindest man in the universe into loving a sick egotistical psychopath like you?"

Her prisoner pushed a soft whimper out of his lungs and shut his eyes, too ashamed to meet her gaze. He wished he could just beg her to end his miserable life, but his tongue was cooked and useless. Listening to her speak of the Doctor was absolute torture and hurt him more than all of his physical injuries put together. _Maybe this is how it his like…This is hell._ _My rightful punishment for letting the Doctor die. It is all I deserve._

An unwanted tear dripped down the corner of his eye and flowed down his cheek onto his pillow.

"Is that all?" River muttered as she coldly observed his grief. A sad, mocking grin appeared on her lips. "Oh your greatest and darkest secret, finally revealed! You loved him after all, and the Doctor knew it." She stepped away from him, not wanting to let him see how affected she was by that knowledge.

"We all loved him." She said softly. "And we all have to suffer deeply now he's gone." She came back, wiping the wetness from her face. She showed him a small glass vial. "That's why it's so very unfair, that you, who is the most undeserving of the Doctor's love, shall be spared of that misery."

The Master groaned when he saw her slowly screw off the lid. The content of the vial wriggled impatiently like a nest of nimble worms.

Knowing what they were and understanding what she was about to do to him, the Master fearfully shook his head as much as the metal cage allowed him to, and blinked his eyes, begging her to stop.

"It's a little too late for that, don't you think?" She held the vial right above his right eye, and slowly tilted it to let the creatures slide through the opening. Like a thick drop of oil, they clung onto the rim in thinning threads of slime before they dropped into the Master's eye. He fought against his bonds when the creatures crawled inside his tear-duct, leaving a track of inflamed flesh in their wake. He gasped and uttered a muted scream as they ate their way into his brain, severing nerves, and mauling through his cortex like maggots devouring an apple core. And as he suffered, River Song kept watching, just like Rassilon once did through the blackened bars of the Master's burning prison. She followed every moment of his agony and stored it in her memory in an effort to appease her aching heart that craved vengeance.

However, it did not give her the satisfaction that she had longed for.

**7.**

Donna sat alone in the dark facing a giant panel of screens. Each one of them showed a different news channel that was broadcasted to the Judoon spaceship from planet Earth, millions of miles away. Collectively they sent out a message of chaos and destruction.

_- This is BBC correspondence Eva Lockheart, reporting outside the United Nations headquarters in New York. The secretary-general has just issued a statement condemning the crimes committed by the Infinity Corporation who has invaded the Gulf region with a large privatized army, thereby violating international treaties and threatening the world oil resources. -_

_- A black day in the history of humankind as world leaders declare war on the Infinity Corporation, who in the recent week has carried out terror attacks in all major cities around the world, including London, Paris, Berlin, Beijing and Tokyo, killing and injuring millions of civilians. –_

Donna didn't want to watch, but couldn't help herself. This was her planet, her world. Everyone and everything she had ever loved and knew was on that far away blue speck on the horizon. How could she turn away from it, even if she could do nothing to stop it from falling apart?

_- I am reporting live from the nuclear wasteland of what once was the beating heart of New York city. This global metropolis and home of millions has been reduced into ashes. The great statue of liberty, the symbol of freedom, is completely destroyed and has crumbled into the harbor. Within a radius of 100 miles of ground zero, all living things, animal or human, have been literally seared to death. Outside this death zone, many were killed by the firestorm that resulted from the bombing. Others suffer horrific burns and are slowly succumbing to radiation disease. The UN, backed by the alien military defense force of the Shadow Proclamation, has sent out thousands of medical aid workers to the affected region –_

_-Food riots and civil wars have broken out over large parts of the former United States as continuous warfare has exhausted the region's basic food resources. The starving population has turned against itself as conditions deteriorate and has become increasingly desperate –_

_- A crude footage of an amateur moviemaker was shown on screen. It was probably taken by a bystander using a videophone. An enraged mob was gathered around a tree. A man, beaten and bleeding, was dragged to the center of the circle. Someone came forward and fastened a thick rope around his neck. "Repent! We should all repent!" The man called out in a voice hoarse. His face was horribly mutilated; his ears and nose were gone and his forehead was branded with the symbol of the Infinity Cult. Despite of his injuries, he continued to scream with mad conviction. "The day of reckoning is upon us! Let the God of the Infinity enter the minds of all of you sinners! All of humankind shall bow before his might!" _

"_String him up!" An enraged spectator shouted. "He's one of those cult-members. Kill him! Kill that dirty bastard!"_

Donna turned away in disgust when the lynching mob strung the mad doom-speaker up on the tree. These were the horrors of the last days of human civilization. If the Doctor was still here to witness this, it would have broken his hearts.

_-The battle of Honshu commences as Shadow Proclamation forces continue to defend Kyoto, the last human stronghold in the Eastern hemisphere, against overwhelming enemy Infinity forces. Thousands of the civilian survivors are evacuated from the island -_

_- Europe is burning after the nuclear bombing of France, Germany and England –_

_-Biochemical warfare has turned the once prosperous coastal regions of south and northern China into a lifeless toxic wasteland –_

_-The largest evacuation operation in the history of humankind was initiated by our alien ally forces to save the human race from extinction. Thousands of survivors of what is now known as the Final War were carried to safety by Judoon spacecrafts for resettlement in the recently established refugee camps in the nearby star systems of Agora and Zion2. The Last Defense government has issued out a waiting list, and those of you who are eligible for evacuation should immediately report themselves to –_

_- This is the Last Defense government's final statement: It has been confirmed that the last fighting forces of the Shadow Proclamation have left Earth. They have abandoned us. Planet Earth and humankind are now facing terminal extinction. This was Eva Lockheart. For those few brave souls who are still here, may God have mercy on us all. –_

For a long time after the final images had faded away into snowy static, Donna remained in the room, and continued to stare at the empty screens. It was not until the silence eventually became unbearable that she got up from her chair and left.

**8.**

Donna had rejected the offer of River Song to be taken back to her own time. It may be foolish and futile, but she wanted to stay and help whenever help was needed. She knew that the Doctor would have done the same. Besides, she could no longer go back to 2011 and live her life pretending everything was normal. Not now she carried that terrible knowledge with her that the world as she knew it was going to end within a decade. On her request, River sent out a searching party for the Noble family. After a week, River came back with the news that they had finally found Sylvia and Shaun. They were taken to a refugee camp on Alpha Centurion in the Agora solar system, and were both in good health. Her grandfather Wilf however, was too old to make it on the evacuation list. He was left behind. According to the scarcely available records, Wilfred Mott continued to live in their old family home in Cheswick lane till he died during a bomb attack on London on august the 27th. Donna was with him that day. Rescue workers found her buried under the rubble. She was rushed into hospital, only to succumb to her injuries the following day.

Strangely, the news of her own death did not upset Donna. It felt hollow and insignificant compared to the pain of loss she felt for those she had loved so dearly in her life. "At least he didn't die alone." She told River Song as tears began to fall for her beloved granddad. "I was with him till the very end."

"This is from the soldier who identified you in the hospital." River handed it to her. It was a silver snowflake necklace. "He said that you held it in your hand and refused to let it go, even when they took you into the operation room." River paused and followed Donna's reaction intensively. "Is this important to you?"

Donna blinked her eyes at it. "I don't know. I am even not sure that it is mine." She turned the pendant in her hand. "I've never worn anything like this in my life."

"Are you absolutely sure?"

A memory passed her mind. She was 18 years old, still more a child than a woman. A gentle hand brushed her hair away and fastened the lock of the necklace around her neck. Looking down at the silver snowflake, she followed the delicate patterns with her fingertips.

"No." Donna muttered. "No I am not sure." She was alarmed how familiar the pendant felt in her hand.

"Did someone give this to you?"

A man appeared in her memories. A young man, tall and lean like a birch tree. He was smiling at her. It was a catchy, boyish grin that she used to find irresistible.

"It was a gift." Donna muttered, grabbing her head. More memories came flooding in, and the more she remembered the more she became confused. "He gave it to me."

"Who Donna?" River urged, watching every change in her facial expression. "Do you remember who it was who gave this to you?"

Strange images flashed through her mind. She remembered things of childhood. Things that she thought she might have forgotten. There was an old mansion, two streets away from her house that should be unoccupied, but a family lived there. There was crippled boy, standing in front of his bedroom window. His presence in her past was so familiar, and yet at the same time, so very alien to her that the contradiction made her head spin.

Then she recalled what the Doctor had told her. His last words whispered into her ear before they parted. Take care of the boy in the mirror. She had seen the boy before in her dreams. He was the man trapped inside the mirror, the corrupted the eye of Harmony, buried in the heart of Dagon's tomb. She remembered him clearly now. She even knew his name. Donna gazed up in shock at River Song, who returned her a sad knowing smile. "I am sorry Donna. I really am, but we couldn't keep him here. Rassilon would have found him."

Donna's face hardened when she finally understood the Doctor's words. "What have you done to me?" Her voice trembling as she held on to the pendant till the sharp corners cut into her hand. "Tell me. _What the hell have you done_?!"

**The End**

That was it people. I hope you enjoyed "A Map of the Soul." If you did, please leave a comment behind, or even when you're upset about how it ended and want to rant, let me know. I know it's a depressing ending, but at least I've left you with a hint of hope. There are only two "episodes" left before this series ends. Next one is called "Against all things ending." I am writing this on 24 September 2012, and I have not written one word for it as yet, but hopefully will have something on paper by the time this last chapter is published. Until the next time, take good care of yourself.

Alan.


End file.
